Azkaban Revisited
by Ayla Pascal
Summary: COMPLETE! After seven years of war, there is nothing the wizarding world wants more than to just forget. LuciusHermione
1. Chapter 1

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

Chapter 1

_The Daily Prophet, December 22, 2005_

"Jack Corley was inaugurated last week with few opposing this new Minister for Magic.

"'Perhaps, finally, we'll get someone useful in office. A person who can match and maybe even surpass Fudge the Great,' a wizard was heard commenting to a friend.

"Corley has had a long and distinguished career working in the Ministry. Most recently, he has been working as an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries. He says that he has high hopes for his term as Minister. In a speech earlier today, he was quoted as saying that he would 'transform wizarding Britain' and 'ensure peace and prosperity'.

"_The Daily Prophet_ also congratulates him on his recent marriage. His wife is reported to be 'very happy' about her husband's new job."

Hermione let out an exasperated breath of air as yet another person threw away one of her leaflets. She could read the bold scrolling script from here: _Protest the conditions of Azkaban! _A worthy cause, she told herself resolutely as she remembered the haunted expression on Snape's face during his testimony. As she looked at the set lines of his mouth and his clenched fists, she promised that she would try her best to get him released or at least get him better conditions.

However, it seemed that she was the only one interested. People hurried past, their arms full of Christmas shopping, eager to forget the past. They simply weren't interested in hearing about the atrocious conditions in Azkaban, nor did they want to hear anything else about the war.

After seven long years of war, it was over and most simply wanted to forget it had ever happened.

Not Hermione, though. Ever since she'd had sat there, still numb from the pain of watching former classmates die, listening to the Wizengamot pronounce Severus Snape guilty and then hearing about the terrible conditions in Azkaban, she had been campaigning for the rights of the prisoners. "Even Muggle prisoners have better conditions than our inmates!" she had tried to tell the Minister. But Fudge had simply looked at her and Hermione remembered, with a shiver, her strange impression that he hadn't seen her at all.

Hermione handed out yet another leaflet to a harried looking middle-aged witch who was dragging along two youngsters.

The witch looked at the piece of parchment. "But my dear," she said to Hermione, with a slight frown. "Don't you know? The war is _over._"

Hermione wasn't sure what that had to do with her message, but apparently the witch was satisfied as she hurried off, children in tow. Everywhere she went, everyone seemed to have the same opinion as the witch. People were just so relieved that it was over and that they had won, that they simply wanted to get along with their lives. They didn't want any more trouble.

Too bad, she thought grimly as she began to walk towards The Leaky Cauldron. It simply wasn't right or fair that Snape, who had risked his life in the war, had been sentenced to ten years in Azkaban. And all because of what somebody had decided was "overly zealous use of the Imperius Curse where other methods would have sufficed".

The Wizengamot had considered itself very fair and judicious in its judgment of the Snape case. After all, as one of its members later pointed out to The Daily Prophet: "We could have sentenced him to life imprisonment for the use of an Unforgivable. But we were lenient as all of his victims were Death Eaters."

How ironic, Hermione thought. She remembered the battles well. The Death Eaters were throwing around the Killing Curse, yet Snape was punished for using Imperius as a non-lethal way of disabling the enemy? The Death Eaters he had performed Imperius on were told to go and hide themselves and await Ministry Aurors, which they did dutifully. He had even saved her life once by sending a Death Eater on a wild goose chase around Diagon Alley.

Hermione folded her lips tightly. She was determined to get him out of Azkaban if it was the last thing she managed to achieve. It wasn't simply because of the life debt she owed him; it was also a matter of principle. He shouldn't be in there and since nobody else seemed willing to do anything about it, she would have to.

Currently, however, she seemed to be having no luck in even promoting public awareness about the issue.

With a sigh, she pushed open the door to The Leaky Cauldron and stepped inside the small pub. She unwrapped her scarf, took off her coat and sat down, placing her pile of leaflets beside her.

The Leaky Cauldron was near to empty nowadays. It seemed to be the unspoken message around the streets that there were just too many memories of the war in the old place. So these days, it was simply used as a thoroughfare for traffic into Diagon Alley. There was even news of building a new pub somewhere else.

"Not much luck, eh?" Tom said as he handed her a warmed butterbeer.

"About the same as yesterday," she replied absently as she sipped the sweet drink. "Perhaps after the Christmas period."

"Perhaps." His tone was non-committal. "Maybe you'll get more luck in the Ministry with that new chap in charge."

Hermione shrugged. "I hope so," she said. "But more likely than not, I'll just run into more bureaucratic red tape." She gave a wry smile. "One thing that Muggles and wizards have in common."

Tom gave a crooked toothless smile. "Have you met the new Minister? The word on the street is that he's quite progressive. Wants to change things around here."

She tilted her head to one side and looked the old barman in the eye. "I hope so," she said quietly. "We could do with some change and if Jack Corley is the one to do it, then so be it." Hermione lifted her mug and drained the contents. She handed Tom a galleon. "Keep the change." You'll need it, was unsaid.

"Thank you." Tom gave her a genuine smile as she left.

Hermione mused over what Tom had told her. She hadn't really been following the succession of new Ministers after Fudge's resignation. As far as she could tell, each Minister simply built on Fudge's legacy of bombast. But perhaps… she let herself feel a sliver of hope. Just maybe Corley would be different.

She passed a street vendor and picked up a copy of The Daily Prophet. The cover proclaimed: _Jack Corley: our new progressive Minister!_

Quickly, she skimmed the article but couldn't see anything new in it. The same old empty promises. The same old lies. The same old proclamations that every new politician made. "Rubbish," she muttered and threw the newspaper into a bin.

- 

Hermione looked at the little memo fluttering on her desk with surprise and no small amount of trepidation. In the year or so she'd been working at Research and Development, she had never been contacted by the Ministry. Despite the fact R & D was officially a Ministry department, they were given a fair amount of leeway to do their own work and were rarely ever contacted by the Ministry proper. Even when they were contacted, the messages usually went to the Head of R & D. In fact, Hermione could not remember a single instance in the past year that she had been singled out by the Ministry.

She grasped the small flying message firmly and opened it.

_Miss Granger, _

_Please report to the Minister's office immediately. This message will turn into a portkey in five minutes._

Her feeling of trepidation grew. What on earth did Jack Corley, a man who she had never met, want with her? Perhaps, she thought, with a feeling of icy fear, he wanted to stop her from campaigning for better conditions in Azkaban. She nervously smoothed out her hair and re-tied it. It was best to look presentable, regardless of what the meeting was about.

She felt the familiar tug of the Portkey as the five minutes were up. When the world re-orientated itself, Hermione found herself standing outside the Minister's office. She could smell the paint on the new, bright and shiny _Jack Corley_ that was emblazoned on the door. With a last adjustment of her robes, Hermione knocked on the door.

She jumped slightly when the door opened. Her first impression of Corley was of a tall, dark-haired man who, although not conventionally handsome, had a certain distinguished flair about him. There was something arrogant in his expression, Hermione decided as she held out her hand to shake.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Granger," Corley said, the arrogant tilt of his chin belied by his smile

Hermione was perturbed by his voice. It was … _believable_. A politician's voice had no right to be like that. He spoke as though everything he said was the truth and that he could never speak anything else. When he spoke, she felt that he was truly very glad to see her. "Thank you, Minister," she said, inclining her head. "And congratulations."

He held up his hand. "Please, congratulations are a little early, don't you think?" he said with another easy smile.

She couldn't think of a reply to that so she simply gave a rather nervous smile. A _very_ good politician, she thought decisively. She was already off her guard. Remember, Hermione told herself sternly, regardless of how charming he may be, he will still follow the Ministry's rules and regulations. He won't change anything. "This is a lovely office," she said, breaking the awkward pause that had fallen.

And indeed, it was a beautiful office. Corley had obviously chosen his designers well. The windows let in the morning winter sun, which illuminated the huge room. There were hanging plants on the wall. Hermione squinted at one wall and recoiled. There seemed to be a Devil's Snare on it.

Corley, obviously seeing what she was looking at and the expression on her face, hastened to reassure her. "It's contained by magical energy fields. Quite a new creation by some of our Herbologists. The man who masterminded the whole project, perhaps you know his name, a Mr. Neville Longbottom."

Hermione blinked. Neville? "Indeed, we used to attend Hogwarts together."

"Splendid!"

She expected him to clap his hands or make a gesture of excitement, but he didn't.

There was a long silence.

"I expect you are wondering why you have been called here," he said, motioning for her to sit down.

She sat down on the proffered chair. Corley also took a seat, not behind the desk, but on the chair beside her. Smart, she thought. Very smart. "I have been wondering," she said coolly and then decided to be blunt. "I hope that the Ministry isn't having problems with my campaigning for better conditions for the prisoners of Azkaban."

To Hermione's surprise, Corley looked shocked. "On the contrary, Miss Granger," he said. "During the last few days, I've been reading through some of your submissions to the Minister and I'm astonished that my predecessors have refused them so bluntly. You say that one of the prisoners actually fought on our side during the Voldemort Wars?"

She blinked. "Yes, Severus Snape. He spied for the Order, fought for us, risking his own life. He also saved my life during one of the battles. I'm sure I wrote it in one of the submissions."

He shuffled a few papers on his desk and plucked one from the pile. "Indeed you did." He looked at Hermione intently. "You are a very astute young lady, but I'm sure you already know that."

A part of Hermione's mind was screaming flattery, but she was pleased to hear the comment nonetheless. Despite the Death Eaters being locked away, Muggle-borns still had a difficult time in the wizarding world. "Thank you," she said, more out of a sense of obligation than out of any real pleasure in hearing the words.

"It's the truth," he said with another disarming smile. "And that is why I have a project for you, one that only you can undertake. If you agree, I plan on making this public next week." He leaned forward and looked her straight in the eye. "I plan on removing the Dementors from Azkaban."

"That's an excellent idea," she said, after a pause, trying to recollect her thoughts. It was certainly a surprise and she wasn't entirely sure she had kept all of her astonishment off her face. "But what does it have to do with me?"

"With the previous caretaker wanting to take a leave of absence, and the Dementors gone, we will need somebody, or several people, to look after Azkaban. You were the first person who came to mind."

Hermione blinked rapidly. "You want me to be a caretaker?" she asked. She had to admit, the idea of the Dementors away from Azkaban sounded excellent, but she wasn't sure whether she wanted to be demoted to being a caretaker because of it.

Corley gave an easy laugh. "A caretaker does sound pretty awful, doesn't it? No, what you will be given is full control over Azkaban and its inmates." He gave an easy shrug. "Some of your suggestions on improving Azkaban's conditions sound intriguing and I would like to see how they would work out in our society. Of course, you will be fully compensated for this. Your salary will be doubled and you may have visitors whenever you wish." He looked serious. "There is a slight downside unfortunately, and that is you must remain at Azkaban Island for a minimum of 300 days every year. You may hire other people to help you and their salaries will be funded by the Ministry."

It all sounded rather surreal to Hermione and she said so.

Corley smiled and said, "I'm sure somebody as intelligent and as up-to-date as you has read yesterday's Daily Prophet. I don't blame you for being a non-believer, but I assure you, I will change wizarding Britain."

For the first time since she read the article, Hermione thought that she might actually believe him. There was something about his honesty that appealed to her. It was refreshing from Fudge's rhetoric. "I have to think about it," she said. "It's a huge decision to make."

"Perfectly understandable," he told her. "However, I must stress that time is of the essence here. I'm afraid you only have three days to make you your mind."

She nodded and stood up to leave. Suddenly, a thought hit her. "Where will the Dementors be sent after they leave Azkaban?"

As she watched, Corley's expression became icy and frost edged his words. "I'm afraid, Miss Granger, that that information is classified. Good day."

"Good bye," she said, and opened the door.

He called out from behind her. "The memo will transform into a Portkey to take you back to your office. The Ministry hopes you will take us up on this offer. And Miss Granger? Feel free to come back and visit anytime you wish."

Hermione couldn't see his face, but she thought that his tone was the same jovial tone that he had used throughout the entire meeting. It was a far cry from the cold, bureaucratic tones he'd used when she had inquired about the Dementors. _Just what are the Dementors being used for_, she wondered as she reappeared into her office.

- 

The day was cold and Hermione drew her coat around herself in an attempt to preserve body heat. From where she stood on the peninsula, the winter winds blustered in from the ocean and seemed to freeze her much as a Dementor would. As she waited, Hermione tapped her foot impatiently on the dock, staring into the distance where she could see the mists enshrouding Azkaban Island and the faint impression of land

"Miss Granger?" a polite voice queried from behind her causing her to spin and almost lose her balance. The young man, who looked about seven years younger than herself, stuck out his hand for her to shake.

She shook the proffered hand. "You must be from the Ministry."

He nodded. "My name is John Davey." His face took on an eager look. "You are the same Hermione Granger who fought in the second Voldemort War?"

"Yes," Hermione said shortly. "I am."

"Tell me, was it really as the books say? I was only a sixth year at Hogwarts when it ended, and we weren't allowed out of our Common Rooms during the fighting." John's words tumbled out.

"I lost many friends in that war."

John looked abashed. "I'm sorry, Miss Granger." It was a rather stuttered apology; the man was obviously nervous. "I'm sure you're wondering how we get to the island."

"Actually, I'm not," Hermione said, a faint smile flickering over her face. She could remember the first time she read the information in _Prisons in the Wizarding World, A History_ and was astounded at the utter stupidity of some of the wizarding world. "We take a Muggle boat, right?"

"Right," John said, after a pause. He frowned. "How did you know that?"

"It's in _Prisons in the Wizarding World, A History_."

He looked surprised and Hermione felt a faint surge of irritation. Was it such a surprise to him that she'd read the book? "Well, yes, we are taking a Muggle boat. The spells around Azkaban will block any magical vessel from docking but Muggle boats are safe."

She nodded, while resisting the urge to roll her eyes. She already knew this.

They walked down the dock when Hermione suddenly stopped upon seeing the boat.

He gave her a sheepish smile. "I'm afraid that is our boat." He pointed towards a small, hand-propelled vessel that was bouncing among the choppy waves. "The Ministry doesn't see fit to update the design. Not for ordinary visitors anyway."

"Too bad," Hermione muttered as she stepped onto the wobbling boat. "Muggles do have better boats, you know. Motor-powered ones."

John handed her an oar. "Well, this one isn't powered by anything but us." He looked at her. "You do know how to row, don't you?"

In response, Hermione took up the oar and began dragging it through the water.

"Passable."

She glared at him. "You're not supposed to be criticising my rowing ability. You're supposed to be taking me on a tour of Azkaban so that I can make my final decision."

"Ah, but the criticism is simply a fringe benefit of that," he said with a smile as he drew his oar smoothly through the water.

"Tell me," Hermione asked, frowning as she felt her muscles ache, "how did you learn how to row like that?"

"My grandfather, he's a Muggle. Every Christmas, Mum'd take us down to his little cottage by the sea and he'd teach me how to row, swim, and sail. Quite the man, he was." A flicker of sadness passed over his face. "Tell me, Miss Granger," he said, obviously ready to change the topic, "what makes you want to take over the guardianship of Azkaban?"

"It's complicated," she admitted.

"We have plenty of time," he said and jerked his head towards the far off island. "About twenty minutes rowing still to come before we dock." When there was a brief pause, he added, "I'm sorry if I'm prying."

"Oh no," Hermione exclaimed. "You're not." I'm just not entirely sure what I'm doing here myself, she added silently. "It's just a job opportunity," she said, rather lamely. "An interesting one."

"That it is," he agreed.

They rowed on in silence. Hermione stared out across the bay of choppy black waves and wondered how many inmates looked out of their tiny barred windows to freedom just in sight. The salty tang of the sea was getting stronger and she felt the wind whip her hair across her face with every motion of the oars. Wiping her eyes, Hermione felt the grit and sting of the ocean.

"If you don't mind me asking, what're you doing now?" John asked as they neared the tiny island.

"I'm working in the Ministry's Research & Development. R&D for short."

He looked puzzled. "R&D? I don't think I have ever heard of that department."

"Not surprising," Hermione replied with a smile. "We're only loosely affiliated with the actual Ministry. We do basic research and development of new spells and potions and then pass on our information to the relevant specialist departments."

"Sounds exciting." His tone was neutral.

"Not particularly," she admitted. "The lab work is pretty interesting, but we're rotated through the labs. There's a lot of paperwork to be filled out. I have a enormous stack on my desk that I have to do when I get back."

"Not if you take this job," he pointed out. "Although, I honestly can't see the appeal in living on a small deserted island with convicts."

"Oh, I'm sure it has its upside. I've always liked the ocean," she said with a faint smile. "Besides, Corley said that I would be able to import staff." She shrugged. "And the salary is decent."

"Aye," he said with a nod. "That is important."

With a rather large bump, the boat slid onto the rocky shores of Azkaban Island. Hermione looked up at the dark stone of Azkaban Prison and shivered. The prison seemed to take up most of the island, or at least as far as the eye could see. The black stone rose up, twenty metres from the edge of the island, and was at least ten metres high. In the stone were set tiny little slits; breathing holes, she suspected. From within the prison came the occasional scream, but most of the time, there was just the low moan of dying life.

As far as Hermione could tell, there were no trees or plants on the island. It was a bleak and barren landscape. Even the sand seemed to be washed a dull grey colour.

"Pretty depressing, isn't it," John said, echoing her mood.

"I suppose," she answered, looking around for something positive to say about the island. She did want to take the job, if only for her old friend—well, perhaps not friend, but colleague—Snape. "The sea still looks nice," she finally said.

He laughed. "Not a resounding yes if that's the only positive part you can find about it. Perhaps we should tour the place." They walked up to the large, rusted iron gates that closed off a flagstone courtyard. Taking out a key, John opened the gate and gestured for Hermione to enter.

As she walked inside the gate (into Azkaban , Hermione told herself with a mental shiver), she found her nostrils assaulted by a faint, but overwhelming stench. It smelled organic and rotting. "What is that?" she asked, trying not to breathe through her nose.

"The smell of death," he explained simply. _Rather melodramatically_, thought Hermione. "Now you know why we don't allow most relatives to visit Azkaban. Now as we enter the first building – I expect you want to look at all of them – I suggest you keep your wand at the ready. The Dementors know that we're coming and shouldn't attack us, but there is no harm in being cautious."

With a visible gulp, Hermione took out her wand. "_Lumos_," she whispered, and it began to shine with a bright light. John did the same.

They walked over to one of the doors set off the courtyard and he pushed it open. The smell was definitely stronger here. With difficulty, Hermione took deep breaths through her mouth and wondered how on earth Sirius had managed to stay here and still remain sane, the Dementors not even affecting him. She felt a prickling of cold at the back of her neck.

"Dementor," John said softly as one glided past them in the wide, low corridor. It turned its head and looked at them before gliding off into the gloom again.

They walked along for about five metres before Hermione could see a small light coming from a barred section of the wall. As they moved closer, she realised that it was a cell. "What section is this?" she asked.

"Minimum security," John answered, still speaking at barely above a whisper Aside from the occasional cries and constant whimpers, Azkaban held the same deserted atmosphere of a tomb; Hermione found herself unconsciously restricting her speech. "Most of these prisoners will be released within a year."

They neared the cell and Hermione peered inside. As her eyes adjusted to the dim torchlight, she could see a man sitting in one of the corners, his knees drawn up to his chest, rocking back and forth. He was wearing a tattered blue uniform – Azkaban issue – and from where she stood, she could see his Azkaban tattoo on his left wrist. When she listened closely, her ears automatically filtering out the other noise, she could hear the man's muttering.

"I never… explosions normal… wasn't my fault!"

At Hermione's puzzled expression, John said, "They're almost all like that. Believe it or not, he's one of the lucid ones. I think…" he peered at a grimy wall chart stuck beside the cell with spellotape, "ah, yes, this particular fellow, a Mr. Bell, has been here for nearly a year now."

"Only a year?" Hermione couldn't help the gasp that escaped. The man looked like he had been in here for at least several.

"He'll be back to normal once he's out of here again," John hastened to reassure her. "Although I wouldn't be surprised if he has a fear of the dark for the rest of his life."

"What's he in here for?" she asked, curious.

John consulted the chart again. "For the 'accidental' explosion of a potion in one of England's premier potion labs. Unfortunately, the explosion was quite large and managed to kill several Muggles standing nearby and injure many more. Apparently several Muggle newspapers picked it up as a terrorist attack and it took much reassuring to the Muggle PM from our Minister that it was simply an accident. He was sentenced here for a year for the ensuing public relations nastiness with the Muggles."

"I heard about that explosion from my parents," Hermione said with a flicker of amusement. It always surprised her how many things crossed over into the Muggle world from the magical and vice versa.

"You're Muggle-born?" he asked with quite a bit of surprise as they walked on.

She raised her eyebrows at him, but wasn't sure they could be seen in the dim light. "Yes. I'm surprised that wasn't mentioned in all those books you read about the war."

He shrugged.

They passed another cell, this time containing a woman who was standing against the wall with her eye pressed against the tiny hole. She turned around in surprise as they passed. "Not another prisoner?" she said, her voice barely a croak.

Hermione was about to answer when John pushed her from behind so that they passed the cell. "Don't answer the prisoners," he ordered.

She glared at him. "Don't talk to me like that," she said angrily. "If I'm going to be in charge of this place from now on, then I will do what I think is right. What do you think talking to the prisoners is going to ferment? Goodwill?"

"It stops rebellion," he said shortly, their earlier rapport and friendliness gone.

"And, pray tell, how are they supposed to rebel if they're locked in, on an island and guarded by Dementors all the time?"

"Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban," he pointed out. "From the Maximum Security section."

Hermione bit her tongue. It was times like this that she wanted to point out that Sirius was an Animagus and normal rules simply didn't apply to him. That problem was now fixed with the Auror Department of the Ministry and all prisoners were tested for Animage powers before they were admitted. But it was top-secret information that Sirius was anything other than a traitor to the Potters and admitting knowledge of his Animagus status would prompt too many probing questions.

"See?" John said, after a minute's silence.

Hermione scowled. His voice sounded rather patronising.

They exited the first building, still silent, and back into the open-air courtyard. Hermione took a deep breath. "The stench is unbearable back there," she said, breathing in the salty sea air.

"It gets worse," was his only response.

They walked towards yet another door. As they got to it, he said, "Medium Security prisoners. Some of the lower order of You-Know-Who's henchmen and 'normal' murderers."

Medium Security Wing, Hermione remembered, was where Snape was being held. She obviously couldn't keep the flicker of excitement from her eyes because John gave her a quizzical look before he opened the door. "Looking forward to the smell again? I've heard that some get used to it and can't do without when they get out." The tone was sarcastic.

She blanched. The smell in this section was worse threefold than the smell in the last. As they walked down the long corridor, she looked in every cell. She saw that the people in some of them were simply lying on the ground, not moving. Others simply sat there and twitched, letting out the occasional whimper or moan. But none made a sound above that. Obviously the screams… Hermione shuddered. Obviously the screams came from the Maximum Security Wing.

As they rounded a corner, she noticed a discrepancy in one of the cells. Well, not so much as a discrepancy, but a difference anyway. The man inside the cell was upright and leaning against one of the walls.

"Snape?" she exclaimed as she ran to the cell, holding up her wand and peering in.

A thin, skeletal and grimy hand grasped her wrist suddenly, with a harder grip than she imagined. "Who…" the person managed to choke out before he was overcome with a racking cough. The thin straggly lengths of hair fell over his face and covered the numerous red, festering sores and wounds. He let go of her wrist.

Hermione knew then and there that she would take the position as caretaker of Azkaban. "It's me, Professor Snape," she said softly, automatically reverting back to his title. "It's Hermione Granger. I've come to get you out of here."

There was a sound of surprise from behind her. "Get him out of here?" John spluttered.

"Read his chart," Hermione snapped as she reached a hand in between the cell bars and held one of Snape's in her own. "You'll be okay," she told him.

"Overzealous use of the Imperius Curse on Death Eaters?" he read off the sheet incredulously.

"Precisely," Hermione said, keeping her voice even and soothing because she knew that somewhere inside his head, Snape was listening. "He doesn't deserve to be in here. You know it. I know it. Unfortunately, the Ministry doesn't know it."

"But you can't mean to release him," John argued. "Surely that won't be allowed."

Hermione had to agree with that. It was highly unlikely her new powers would include the ability to release Azkaban prisoners at whim. "I'm going to transform this prison," she said suddenly, conviction in her tone. "To Muggle standards, at least. In this area, we have a lot to learn from Muggles."

"And Snape?" he asked.

"He'll have to remain on this island, of course, so as to not trigger Ministry sensors, but other than that." She gave a slow smile. "What the Ministry doesn't know won't hurt them." She gave him a pointed look.

John shrugged. "I know you mustn't think much of me, but I won't tell."

"It won't matter if you do. I'm sure my powers as caretaker here will extend that far," she said decisively. And then to Snape, she said, "I promise I'll be back soon. I promise."

They walked off, but not before she looked back and saw Snape staring out of his cell at them. It may have just been her imagination, but Hermione could have sworn she saw a gleam of hope in his dark eyes.

If the Medium Security Wing was bad, Hermione decided as they entered the last building making up Azkaban Prison, then the Maximum Security Wing was Hell itself. The stench of decaying bodies was overpowering even before they walked in.

"Oh my," she managed to get out before she doubled over and threw up on the flagstones outside. As she wiped her mouth on a handkerchief from her pocket (somehow the smell had gotten onto that too), she noticed that she hadn't been the only one disgusted by the smell. There were stains of dried vomit all around her.

"Disgusting," John agreed and wrinkled up his nose. They walked inside and Herminoe found herself bracing herself for the smell again. A quick look at John found him doing the same.

The first few cells contained similar circumstances to what they found in the Medium Security Wing, but as they walked deeper into Maximum Security, Hermione realised that some of the cells didn't seem to hold any people.

"Where are the people?" she asked John but he didn't answer. Turning around, she saw by the faint torch and wandlight that he was turning green.

Clamping a hand over his mouth, he pointed to what Hermione had originally thought was black sludge on the ground. Now that she looked closer…

… she felt bile rise up in her throat.

There were bones and clothing, all coated in the thick black slime. That…

… she put a hand over her mouth and ran.

That was the remnants of a human being.

She felt nauseated and immediately turned around and hurried back along the corridor from where they had entered. John was already ahead of her and he had opened the door. She could feel the fresh air whipping her hair against her face and this calmed her unsettled stomach.

Hermione joined John outside where he was wiping his mouth. "I don't want to see any more," she said.

He nodded. "I agree. Still want to take over this place?"

"Definitely." If anything, she was more sure than before. What a horrible death for those people! How repulsive that nobody had even checked that they were still alive. But, Hermione supposed, it was unlikely anybody had checked since the year or so ago that they dumped all the Death Eaters in here. The Dementors couldn't exactly tell anybody.

As they stood there, she saw a Dementor glide out of the Medium Security Wing. They must be adept at hiding, she realised.

"Let's go," she finally said.

As they got onto the tiny rocking boat once more, Hermione turned her head back and stared at the prison that was growing small in the distance. "I will change you," she said.

John sniffed at his robes. "But first," he said, "we both need a change in clothing."

She agreed.


	2. Chapter 2

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

Chapter 2

Almost lazily, Harry swooped down on his broom and drew level with his teammate. "So," he began, knowing that he would be hearing the angry shouts of his coach soon. "How's things with Pat?"

Chris Lambert gave a small shrug as he leaned forward to give his broom more thrust. "Not bad!" he shouted as he zoomed away after the Quaffle.

The shouting began even sooner than he had anticipated. "Potter!" Coach Whitman barked as she came up on his blind spot. Harry jumped, causing his broom to shudder in mid-air.

"Yes, Coach?" he said innocently, pasting a smile on his face.

She glared at him. Harry knew perfectly well how much Whitman hated him, but he also knew how much she needed him. Hell, the entire team needed him and that was the only reason he was admitted. "Only good for publicity," he heard some of the other team members mutter when he fumbled a shot. Unconsciously, his eyes narrowed.

"Don't take that expression with me, young man!" she fumed as they both manoeuvred their brooms around the practice match being played around them. "There are six other members on this team – seven if you count the reserve -- and they are all working twice as hard as you! They don't suddenly decide to chat with their fellow players mid-practice! They actually want a chance at the Cup this year." She shook her head. "If you keep on doing this, Potter, then I'm afraid you'll be off the team."

"Yes, Coach," Harry said, watching as Whitman flew off to give pointers to the Keeper, who had just let a shot go through the central hoop.

He let his broom drift slowly around the field, watching as the other players zoomed around below him. The problem was that Harry knew Whitman was right. He wasn't putting in nearly as much effort as the other players were. In fact, he hadn't caught the Snitch in the last four practices.

Why doesn't she just fire me? Harry thought angrily. There was a time when winning the World Cup and indeed Quidditch itself meant something, but that time had passed. He still enjoyed the game, but there wasn't the same fire in it any longer. When he played, he wanted to play for fun, not to win, and that simply wasn't allowed in competitive Quidditch. With a bitter twist of his mouth, Harry wondered when he had become like this.

Hermione would probably just tell me to go and get another job, he thought as he drifted towards the changing room entrance at the end of the match. He got off his broom and walked inside the showers. Harry let the hot water stream over him as he tilted his head back, allowing his muscles to relax under the heat.

The problem was, he thought as he dried himself off with a thick, fluffy towel some twenty minutes later, was that other jobs weren't that easy to find. Not even for the Boy Who Lived, the Hero of the Wizarding World. He gave a sardonic smile. _Especially _for the Hero of the Wizarding World.

Putting on his clothes and grabbing his bag, Harry walked out of the changing roads and onto the street.

Of course, he could go and work for the Ministry, but it was unlikely he could get a job like Hermione's. Instead, he'd have to work for Ministry proper and that was rather unpalatable to Harry at the best of times. The new Minister supposedly ran a very tight ship, especially with his Aurors who were required to report in every day as opposed to every three days, as had been custom in the years preceding the war. Harry didn't think he could handle it. Private firms, all desperate to hide their discoveries from rivals, baulked at hiring him for anything but commercials and Harry certainly didn't want to end up as some poster boy for a potions company. There were no positions open at Hogwarts and with much of the staff decimated by the war,

Besides, Harry wasn't sure he wanted to work there anyway. The Headmaster was a fellow by the name of O'Neill or O'Brien or some other Irish name. A newcomer. Diagon Alley was out of the question. Most of the shops there were owned by families who didn't want an outsider nosing in their businesses.

Harry supposed he could always ask the Weasley twins whether he could work in their joke shop but he didn't want to impose. The shop was just getting on its feet after the long years of war and the Weasley family was finally raking in profit. He simply couldn't ask them for help. Not now.

Which left Quidditch. None of the major leagues had an opening, but a minor team had signed him on. But what Harry wasn't prepared for was his waning of interest in the sport after the war. It simply didn't seem important any more.

And that was too bad, because it was plenty important to the rest of wizarding Britain. People, Harry decided, were desperate to cling to any sense of normality after such a tragic few years. He supposed he couldn't blame them.

Still, it was difficult for Harry to play well without his former enthusiasm for the game. He could play passably, but not well.

Looking around, Harry was shocked to realise that he had walked back to his apartment in the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Unlocking the door, he walked inside the tiny space. Hedwig was sitting on the perch next to the open window, preening herself, and there was a letter sitting on the kitchen table.

"Thanks, girl," he said absentmindedly as he grabbed a butter knife to slit open the envelope. He took out a piece of thick parchment.

_Dear Mr. Potter, _

_You are hereby offered a position at Azkaban Prison as part of the new caretaker crew under the direction of Miss Hermione Granger. The pay is negotiable. _

_Please do not discuss this job offer with anybody else. _

_Send your reply by no later than the New Year. _

_Sincerely, _

_Margaret Sampson_

_Secretary to the Minister_

Harry blinked rapidly. _Hermione never told me anything about a caretaker position at Azkaban_, he thought. And then a second thought crossed his mind… finally, he had a chance to do something other than Quidditch.

He looked down and suddenly noticed that there was another, far smaller letter (a note, really) sitting under the first one. Opening that, Harry realised that it was from Hermione.

_Harry_,

Sorry for not telling you earlier about the job offer but it was all sub rosa. Corley told me to keep it low profile because he doesn't want the papers getting wind of it.

Her writing wobbled here, seeming as if she was thinking hard and not knowing what she was going to write.

_It's horrible here. Worse than the war. The Maximum Security unit is like something out of my nightmares. I'm going to try to fix it and I need somebody like you here.. _

_Please, Harry, please come. The pay won't be as good as your Quidditch salary but it's reasonable. But above all, come because I need somebody like you here, a good friend that I can trust. _

_Hermione_

Harry turned the note over in his hands but that was all that was written on it. Nothing asking about his life, nothing about anything he had discussed in their last letter, simply a plea for help. Reading over the note again, he thought he could detect desperation coming off it in waves.

With a start, Harry remembered Hermione's latest campaign. He fished around in his bag and came up with the clip of leaflets she'd given him when she'd seen him last. He hadn't the heart to refuse them but didn't want to hand them out to his colleagues either. She had seemed passionate about the cause then, but now she seemed nearly frantic.

She had described, from anecdotal evidence gathered from previous inmates, details about Azkaban and its conditions. Harry, when he first read her report, suspected that the former inmates had been exaggerating, but now he wasn't so sure.

What could Azkaban be like to terrify her so much?

Harry wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

The setting up of residential quarters on Azkaban took up more time and energy than Hermione first suspected. Even with a crew of Ministry builders, it was three long weeks before her rooms were liveable. And even then, they hadn't set up barriers around to block out the harsh elements and the smell.

The smell was a constant reminder to her that there were prisoners who were suffering in Azkaban. She tried to tell herself that most of them were in there for murder, but that didn't quell the queasy feeling she had whenever she visited the various units.

During this time, the Dementors still had control of Azkaban and Hermione couldn't begin to implement her plans. It was only after her staff had settled that she could begin to change things. She had cajoled several of her old colleagues at R & D to join in this venture, as well as her old friend Harry. They were all arriving today by the same old boat that had brought her here.

The Ministry would be coming here with a larger vessel today to pick up the Dementors and Hermione was glad. Although they showed no signs of overtly attacking her, it was still nerve-wracking to have gliding black _things_ around. Without them around, she wouldn't have to sneak around to give food to Snape. Not that he looked particularly grateful for her efforts, but she could see a difference in his face. It seemed less hollow now.

"Hermione!"

She jumped and turned around to see Harry walk into the small utilitarian room. "Harry," she said, and walked over to give him a hug. "I'm so glad you decided to accept the job offer."

He shrugged. "Quidditch was getting boring."

Hermione stared.

"It was," Harry said with a short laugh. "I believe I mentioned it in several letters of mine."

Turning red, Hermione said, "I'm so sorry. It's just that I've been so busy these last few months with the campaign to change Azkaban and now this." She waved an arm around, encompassing the small room that served as a bedroom and study as well. "I'm just so … frazzled."

"No harm done," he told her. "Are you okay? In the note, you sounded quite frantic."

Before she could answer, there were a couple of sharp raps on the open door. She looked up and saw her old colleagues from R &D.

"Not interrupting you two lovebirds, are we?" William Sandhurst said with a salacious wink. He was a tall fellow with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. He was always teasing Hermione and she found herself laughing at his comment.

"No, Will," she said patiently. "You're not. This," she gestured towards Harry, "is Harry Potter. And these are William Sandhurst and Jeanette Latham. Will and Jean."

"Hey!" Will protested with an easy grin. "If you're going to shorten my name, then I reserve the right to call you Herm. Or 'Mione."

"Don't you dare," Hermione said with a glare. "Anyway, you guys are the new administration of Azkaban. Your work starts this afternoon after the Dementors leave." She could see Harry give a visible shudder. "Don't worry, they haven't done anything to me in the last three weeks."

"No, just turned you into a bossy Know-It-All," Will muttered. "No, wait, you were that already."

Hermione hit him on the arm.

That afternoon, after the last of the Dementors glided onto the Ministry boat – ship, really, Hermione thought with a scowl – she began to hand out the specially prepared Ministry wands. "Your own wands will only work for simple non-harmful like _Lumos_. Anything more complex or in any way harmful must be performed using this wand. It's been especially designed to counter the wards around Azkaban. Do not, I repeat, do NOT let any of the prisoners get their hands on these wands."

She watched as each of them tested out their wands. She had already tried out her own and found it surprisingly attuned with her magic.

With a shiver down her spine, Hermione watched as the Ministry vessel dwindled in the distance. Besides the prisoners, they were the only ones on the island. Again, she wondered why she took the job and indeed why the job had been offered in the first place. And where, where were the Dementors being shipped? These were questions, Hermione vowed, that she would find answers to.

"We're going to get all the prisoners lined up in the main courtyard," Hermione said crisply after everybody had finished levitating random objects and shooting sparks out of their new wands. "They're going to be given a general physical check by two of us, under wandpoint, while the other two go around and _clean _– and I mean CLEAN – out the cells."

Jean, a petite blonde woman with large blue-grey eyes, stared at her. "What's the point?" she asked. "Is it necessary? I mean, wouldn't it just give them strength to escape?"

Hermione thinned her lips, and had the sinking feeling she looked like her mum when she did that. "The conditions here are atrocious. Regardless of their crimes, these are humans in there. They are your fellow witch and wizard. They don't deserve to be treated like that."

Jean looked dubious. "But some of them are Death Eaters. I thought you were Muggle-born…" she let her sentence trail.

Hermione couldn't believe what she was hearing. When she had worked with Jean on an R & D project a few months back, she found the slightly older woman to be nice and intellectually stimulating. She couldn't have guessed that she would propound these kinds of views. "Careful," she said, her tone icy, "or you may begin to sound like them." By the frown on Jean's face, she knew that the other woman didn't understand what she meant. Neither did Harry by the looks of it, but Will looked as though he might. Despite being a joker at times, Will was very intelligent when he wanted to be.

"But all this talk of equal rights," Jean sounded flustered. "It all seems terribly … Muggle to me."

Will interjected before Hermione could respond. "I'll go with Jean to get the Minimum Security prisoners, shall I? And then we'll clean out that cell while you two check of their physical condition."

Hermione nodded tightly and the other two walked off.

"What was that about?" Harry asked once they were out of earshot.

"Sometimes people surprise you with their views," Hermione said as she fingered her wand. She turned to Harry and looked him in the eye. "Tell me I'm doing the right thing," she begged. "Please. Tell me that I'm right to want to bring this prison up to a humane standard."

"Of course you're right," Harry said quietly. "I may not agree, but you're right nonetheless." His hand tightened around the wand, white showing around the knuckles. "I have to admit, a part of me wants Lestrange, Malfoy, Avery and Goyle to rot in there for an eternity, but …"

"What about Snape?" Hermione asked softly.

"As much as a bastard he was during our Hogwarts years," Harry said, "I agree with you. Snape doesn't deserve to be in there, under those conditions."

"Nobody deserves those conditions," she said firmly. "I'll show you the Maximum Security wing after we do the other two wings. After you've seen it," _and smelt it_, she added silently, "then tell me if you still think anybody deserves to be in there."

"If anybody does, then Bellatrix Lestrange does."

Hermione shook her head. "I'm not sure I'd condemn Voldemort to one of those cells."

Something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye and she watched as about twenty prisoners were marched out of the Minimum Security wing. They all wore blue Azkaban uniforms and she could see the lettering and Azkaban symbol that was burned on their left wrists.

"It smells awful in there," Jean said, gasping. She looked ashen.

Hermione looked at her and shook her head. "Wait until you get into the other wings."

"Well," Will said with forced cheerfulness, "we'll be off to clean that wing then. It might take a while."

Hermione looked at the rag-tag bundle of prisoners standing there in the courtyard in their short sleeved blue uniforms, shivering from the blustering cold wind. They reminded her of a documentary on war prisoners she'd seen with her parents when she was younger, but she had never thought that she would be faced with the real consequences.

They smelled awful and that was the least of their worries. Malnutrition, disease and starvation ran rampant. Several prisoners had suspiciously worrying rashes, and one had a blistering pustule on one cheek. Seeing this under the light of day made Hermione feel sick. None of these men and women were in there for murder. Some had made honest mistakes. She didn't want to think about the condition of the other prisoners in the other wings.

She slowly walked around and looked carefully at the prisoners.

One man had rivulets of blood running down his arm from numerous cuts; self inflicted by the looks of it. She shivered. His nails were ragged with blood underneath them.

Another man had bruised, bleeding fists from where he had banged on the stone walls until the very skin on his hands had shredded and torn.

A woman looked flushed and far too warm for this cold climate. Looking closer, Hermione noticed beads of sweat running down her face. There was a festering wound on one arm. Septicaemia, she thought.

"This is horrible," Harry whispered into her ear as he came up behind her.

"This," she said tightly, "is the best of the lot." She shook her head. "First things first, they're all going to have showers and to change into the new uniforms I ordered. And then Will and I will look at their wounds and see what we can fix. I managed to get a few cases of medicine from St. Mungo's."

"And what do I do?" Harry asked.

"You're going to supervise the men in the showers and I the women." She gave a grim smile. "After all, we can't take any chances that any of them will run away, can we?"

It was a bad joke and Harry knew it. There was little or no chance that this bunch of prisoners could run away. Where would the five or six of them, who were in a condition to run, go? The true miraculous nature of Sirius's escape was finally beginning to dawn on him.

Hermione gave a small sigh of relief after the shower ordeal was over. Some of the prisoners had looked shocked at being given the chance to do so and others looked embarrassed at showering before her. But finally, all of them were freshly washed and dressed in the new bright yellow pyjama-like uniforms. These actually had sleeves that covered the entire arm, covering the ugly Azkaban tattoo.

She was now checking – Harry had been sent to clean up the Minimum Security wing with Jean - the various illnesses of the prisoners. Will was standing guard in the corner, wand at the ready in case any prisoners – however unlikely it was – tried to escape. They swapped at regular intervals as both of them had medical training.

Most of the inmates looked sullenly at her when she asked them what was wrong with them. Some insulted her and others simply refused to talk. So Hermione had resorted to diagnosing possible problems herself.

For those with rashes and cuts, she had given them cream and bandages. For the man with oozing pustule, she had given a potion. For the woman who looked feverish, she had given Dreamless Sleep, along with an antibiotic potion.

She was now treating somebody who looked like they belonged in Hogwarts, a small girl who looked like she should have been studying Potions and working out ways to evade Filch (who was one of the few 'teachers' of her era who had remained at Hogwarts). Instead, the small black-haired girl with the china doll face was here in Azkaban. Hermione opened her mouth to ask why she was in Azkaban, but then closed it, deciding that it was a rude question.

The girl looked up at Hermione as the older woman tied a bandage tightly around her arm. Her eyes were wide, almost innocent if it wasn't for the glint of … _something_ that shone deep in those dark brown irises. Hermione wasn't sure whether it was guilt, anger or bitterness. Maybe it was a combination of all three or maybe it was none of them. "You're wondering what I ever did to deserve Azkaban," the girl stated.

Hermione blinked in surprise. "The thought did cross my mind," she said guardedly.

In response, the girl didn't say anything but simply rolled up the sleeve of her left arm. There, on the forearm, above the ugly Azkaban mark was the even uglier Dark Mark, faded to a grey-brown now that Voldemort was vanquished. "I joined in my Seventh year," she said simply. "I'm not as young as I look. I was a year or two below you in Hogwarts. They decided that I was too young for Medium Security."

Hermione wasn't sure why, but she somehow felt that the girl wanted to say something else. She felt that something was missing from the girl's sentence, and then with a cold wave of horror, she realised what it was. Memory opened and Hermione suddenly realised that she remembered the girl from Hogwarts. She was in Ginny's year, a Hufflepuff. One day as Hermione was walking, alone, from the Great Hall, the girl brushed past her angrily and hissed _Mudblood. _That epithet was what was missing from her sentence. Doubtless the girl still wanted to call her that. She tightened the bandage more than was necessary, ignoring the girl's wince of pain.

Sending the girl away with a tight-lipped smile, Hermione surveyed the prisoners. Despite their new uniforms, freshly washed bodies and cleaned cuts, they were still a pathetic bunch.

Briefly, she wondered whether she could do something with these witches and wizards. Hadn't she read of certain Muggle countries using their prisoners for labour? That would certainly make good use of these witches and wizards, and would ensure that they had plentiful food and water. However, she suspected that an idea this radical wouldn't be supported in the Ministry, despite her supposedly total control of Azkaban prison.

"Hermione," said a voice at her elbow. The voice quivered.

Hermione turned and saw Jean standing there, the older woman seeming grey and ill. "What's the matter?" she said, concerned. "Do you need some water, food?" She glanced at her wristwatch. "Gosh, we've been working for a long time. Perhaps it is time for a break."

"That would be a good idea," Jean said faintly. "I don't think I can stand this smell any longer."

"Go out of the courtyard and stand by the water," Hermione ordered. "The saltwater spray should help you."

Jean nodded and walked off. Some of the prisoners watched her leave but none made a move to follow.

"If she can't stand that smell…"

Hermione started and saw that the Death Eater girl with the china doll face was speaking.

"I've had to deal with that smell for over two years!" she said, her voice rising into just below a shriek. She took a visible breath and seemed to calm down. She gave a small sneer. "Perhaps she also has Muggle parentage. I hear that it diminishes your ability to cope with difficult situations."

Repressing a desire to just cast the girl in a full body bind, Hermione said carefully, "I am Muggle-born. What are you insinuating?"

The girl gave an ingratiating smile. "Nothing, Hermione Granger, nothing." She paused. "Did you know…" she trailed off.

Despite herself, Hermione asked, "What?"

"Despite your unfortunate parentage," the girl said, "did you know that there was a small but decisive movement to initiate you into the Death Eater movement during your seventh year?"

Hermione had certainly known no such thing. She was astounded – to put it mildly. "That is ridiculous." Inside, however, she was wondering. There had been a few brief, cryptic hints during her seventh year by people who she'd suspected to be Death Eater sympathisers.

"I couldn't agree more," the girl said icily. "But as I said, there was a small and rather influential group." She gave Hermione a slight, rather enigmatic smile. "Perhaps we would have won if more had listened. I would tell you more, but now," she pointed towards the building and Hermione saw Harry walking towards them, "you seem too busy. Also, in case you were wondering, my name is Rebecca Wang."

Hermione _had_ been wondering what the girl's name was and now she watched the small figure disappear into the group of prisoners who seemed to stand there aimlessly. "What's the matter, Harry?" she said, more sharply than she intended when Harry neared.

"We've almost finished the Minimum Security wing," Harry said. "There wasn't really that much to do, mainly normal stuff, really." He hesitated for a moment before saying, 'I read all the names pinned outside the cells and I couldn't help noticing that Snape wasn't among them."

"I'm not surprised. He's in the Medium Security wing," Hermione said. To her surprise, she thought she could detect a note of sympathy in Harry's tone of voice.

"What's the Medium Security wing like?" Harry asked after a short pause.

"Worse." There really wasn't any other word she could use to describe it. She looked around and saw Jean coming back in the gate. "Look, if you're curious, go and see the Medium Security wing for yourself. If you can get Snape to talk, then good for you. And Harry," she grabbed his arm, "remember that he did fight on our side. He even saved my life."

"As if I could forget," he said bitterly. "But don't forget that he also tried to make my years at Hogwarts as miserable as possible."

"Shouldn't those two cancel each other out? Or do you value my life so cheaply?" Seeing that Harry couldn't come up with a response, Hermione pushed him towards the Medium Security wing. "Look, Jean and I will put the prisoners back in their cells. Go see for yourself and then tell me if Snape deserves it."

With a nod, Harry walked away.

- 

With no small amount of apprehension, Harry walked towards the Medium Security wing of Azkaban prison. Arriving at the door, he steeled himself before pushing it open. Immediately, his nostrils were assaulted by a smell far worse than what he'd just experienced in the Minimum Security section. Taking deep breaths through his mouth, Harry tried to ignore the smell, but it seemed to pervade and sink into his clothes, his hair, even the pores of his skin.

The corridors of the Medium Security wing were much the same as the Minimum Security wing, except the prisoners. As Harry walked, he couldn't see any prisoner who looked even as good as the worst of the Minimum Security section. Walking slowly, he looked at every name beside every cell until he came to:

Severus Arius Snape, Death Eater, overzealous use of an Unforgivable curse.

Harry looked down and saw a file propped up against the wall, obviously placed there by Hermione. Kneeling down, Harry picked it up and opened it. Inside was then a detailed account, including witness statements, of the final battle as well as preceding battles. It gave Harry a cold feeling to read Lucius Malfoy's witness statement that Snape was a Death Eater. He wondered whether there was a similar witness statement next to Malfoy's cell with Snape's statement instead.

Still trying to ignore the smell, Harry stepped up to the dark, dank cell and peered inside through the bars. At first, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he couldn't make out anybody, but then he saw what he first thought was a small bundle of rags huddled in a corner.

"Snape?" he asked. "Is that you?" Harry then kicked himself for the stupidity of the statement. Who else could it be?

There was no response.

Harry examined the floor of Snape's cell and realised that it was different from the floors of the other cells. There were more bowls of water, for one, and there was actually a half-finished bowl of rice lying there. In the other cells, the bowls seemed to be licked clean. Hermione must have given him extra food, Harry thought. Part of him was glad she had done so and part of him wished that she hadn't. Despite the fact Snape had fought on their side and had saved Hermione's life, Harry could still feel a twinge of bitterness as he remembered what the older man made his Hogwarts' years like.

Still, looking at the small huddled figure now, Harry felt a twinge of sympathy. Yes, Snape had humiliated him during school, but never to this extent.

He had almost given up and walked away when he heard a small hoarse croak from the corner. "Granger?"

"No, unfortunately not," Harry said. "It's me, Harry Potter."

"Potter."

Snape didn't seem able to do more than simply say single words, but he seemed lucid and responsive at least.

"I'm part of Hermione's team to help clean up Azkaban," Harry said, not knowing what else to say. He had wanted to confront the man for five years about Snape's bitter, unreasonable hatred of him, but now that he was in front of him, he just couldn't say it. The small huddle in the corner wasn't the same as the towering, bat-like creature who taunted him during his schooling years.

"Good," Snape said faintly.

"Hermione says that she'll get you out of there soon," Harry said softly. "But not in a way that arouses suspicion in the other prisoners."

"So she said," Snape managed to say, though the words were mangled and barely comprehendible. His voice seemed to have changed during his incarceration in Azkaban and was now a far cry from the clearly heard, sneering tones of Harry's Hogwarts' years.

Harry wasn't sure he could stand here asking questions or making small talk with a man who could – or would – only give short croaked responses and whom he hated and hated him. He mumbled an excuse and then walked off quickly, wanting to be away from the stench of death permeating the wing.

Once outside, Harry leant against the stone walls and breathed a sigh of relief. Although there was still a faint smell outside, it was now overlaid with scents of clean clothing, soap and medicine, and far better than inside.

"Still determined that Snape rot in there?" Hermione asked as she came up beside him.

Harry didn't answer her question. "So you put all the prisoners back in their cells?"

She nodded, although there was a glint in her eyes that said she wasn't finished discussing Snape's welfare. "Jean and Will are talking to the house elves about dinner right now." Her mouth was set in a thin line as she said these words.

"House elves?" Harry was surprised.

"Yes," Hermione said wearily. "Azkaban has house elves. How else did you think the prisoners got their food before? They were ordered to only provide the minimum sustenance before, but that is going to be rectified. We will also get our food from them." She let out a long tired breath. "I'm not going to pretend that I'm happy about there being house elves, but I can't see any other way we can feed the prisoners."

"We could cook ourselves," Harry said dryly.

Hermione rolled her eyes.

That night, sitting in his own room, Harry wondered for the tenth time that day why he had agreed to this job. To be stuck on a tiny little out of the way island that was home to a prison wasn't exactly the best of career options. It was ridiculous, almost. He wondered what all four of them would do once all the initial clean up was done. He didn't really think that there was enough to do on the island, what with the house elves and the magic dampeners and everything.

But the initial cleanup, Harry suspected, was going to take longer than he first thought. The Medium Security wing was far worse than he had suspected and from the stony expression on Hermione's face whenever somebody mentioned the Maximum Security wing, he wasn't very hopeful.

A wry smile curled his lips. It was more likely than not that Hermione would continue to campaign the Ministry for other changes to Azkaban after she was sure that all of her charges were medically sound. It would be rather difficult for any campaign to take hold from such a remote position, especially with the restrictions on her travel privileges, but Harry thought that would probably only make her more determined.

The small, low set of buildings, hurriedly constructed by the Ministry, housed the four of them. The house elves took up the fourth wing of the prison. Other than them and the house elves, there were only prisoners on the island.

Harry shivered.

A sudden tapping on his window made him jump. Getting up, he walked over to the tiny window and unlatched it. "Hedwig!" he exclaimed.

The snowy owl nipped his finger gently as he reached for the letter in her claws. She flew around his room once before flying back out of his window. Harry vowed to ask the house elves the next day for some seeds and water for Hedwig.

He looked at the letter and realised that it was from Ron.

The door opened and Hermione poked her head in. "Did I hear Hedwig?" she asked.

Harry nodded. The walls between their rooms were terribly thin. It would probably be their next priority after all the prisoners had been checked over to make their living quarters into a better place. A bubble around it to block out smells would help, he thought, wrinkling his nose. "It's from Ron," he said, waving the letter.

Hermione walked in and closed the door behind her. "What'd he say?"

"I haven't read it yet. I'll read it aloud for you."

Their old friend had gone on to quite a prominent position in the Ministry. He was the Deputy Head of the Department of Security, a new department created in the wake of the Voldemort Wars and the ensuing Muggle obsession with 'terrorism'. It was no longer enough for the entire Ministry to be bothered with keeping the wizarding world under wraps. The Ministry was getting too bureaucratic and it had become essential to create an individual department to deal with that matter. As Harry remembered, it was the predecessor to the current Minister who had established the department.

"_Dear Harry (and Hermione_)," Harry read from the letter. "_How are you guys coping with living at Azkaban? I hope that the job is as fulfilling as you hoped it would be, Hermione._"

"It's perfectly fulfilling," Hermione interrupted.

Harry wrinkled his nose at her and continued reading: "_We've managed to stop some close calls with the Muggles in recent days but one of our junior employees had the bright idea to blame some of the explosions on known Muggle 'terrorist' organisations. The Muggles seem to buy it. _

"_However, I can't say that it seems so rosy on the domestic front. Corley is certainly a very charismatic man but some of my older contacts who remember the first Voldemort War say that he reminds them of Voldemort when he first rose. I'm not saying that Corley is Dark or anything, I'm sure he isn't. He's actually a very nice man, but I'm getting scared of the laws he's been passing lately. There was a new one yesterday, The Media Accuracy Act, or rather as it has been called by some, The Media _Suppression_ Act. _

"_Corley does seem somewhat better than the apathetic Ministers we've had recently. But I don't trust him. All I can say is that the training that they gave me before I entered the Security Department is making me mighty suspicious of him. _

"_I hope that things in Azkaban turn out well for both of you. I'll write if there are any other matters that pop up as I'm sure that you guys don't really have time to read newspapers – not that they are getting less Ministry-leaning. _

"_Your friend, _

"_Ron." _

"He sounds really worried," Hermione said after a short silence. A small smile played about her mouth. "Funny, isn't it? He's changed so much since school. I would have never imagined Ron so be so fired up over security or the policies of the Ministry."

"We've all changed," Harry said quietly.

"I doubt Corley is another Dark Lord," Hermione said decisively. "I've met him. He is charismatic, though, and certainly has his own ideas about what to do."

Harry let out a slow breath. He wondered whether Ron was overreacting, whether he was turning into another Mad Eye Moody who jumped at his own shadow. After all, he had heard that the entrance requirements to the Department of Security were very stringent and more than one prospective entrant had ended up in St. Mungo's for a few weeks. "I'm going to write to some of the old crowd and see what they think about the Minister's policies," Harry said. "Ron may be right."

"Or," Hermione said practically, voicing Harry's silent concerns, "he may simply be overreacting. Anyway, we have more pressing matters." She got up from where she was sitting on Harry's small bed and walked to the door. "I'll see you tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. We still have a lot to do. We'll start on the Medium Security wing tomorrow. I suspect it'll take us more than a few days; there are more people, for one."

"Okay, good night." Harry watched as the door was shut softly. He then turned back and looked at the letter, re-reading it.

Author Notes: Thank you Raspberri13 and A. Miller for their reviews on the first chapter. :) Reviews make me very happy. Constructive criticism is very welcome, of course.


	3. Chapter 3

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

Chapter 3

Hermione found that her prediction was correct. It did take them nearly three days to clear out and treat the residents of Medium Security Wing of the prison. They did it in batches, with Hermione making sure that Snape was in the first batch. Then, in front of all the prisoners in his batch, she announced that he needed special treatment and that he would have to stay in a cell, especially built for special cases in the cottage.

Some of the other prisoners looked suspicious and sullen at this news but nobody questioned it. It would have been suicide, Hermione reflected. After all, they had the wands and the upper hand.

The third evening found her the four of them and Snape sitting around the small table in their cottage – which was really a long, low building. She had decided to discard all pretence.

"Severus Snape fought on our side during the war. He even saved my life," she said crisply. "He doesn't deserve to be in Azkaban but since I can't release prisoners until their sentences are up, he will stay here with us."

Jean looked up with a mutinous expression on her delicate features. "And why are you so firmly convinced of his innocence?"

"Because," Hermione said. "Just because. I saw him risk his life many times. He's only in here for using the Imperius Curse on Death Eaters who were attempting to kill innocents."

"But Hermione," Jean argued, "that sounds awfully like the argument that just because the Imperius Curse doesn't directly harm people, then it's an okay curse." She shuddered. "Anyway, the cells are cleaned up, why can't he stay there?"

"Because he's not guilty!" she burst out. Helplessly, Hermione looked at Harry for assistance but he simply studied his fingers. Surprisingly, help came from another quarter.

"Azkaban hasn't affected my mind yet," came a dry comment from Snape.

Hermione gave a small jump. That was the first time he had spoken anything close to a full sentence. She studied him critically. He still looked severely malnourished, but fortunately was clean and had his wounds dressed. His voice though was still raspy but was closer to his former tone.

"You were found guilty by the Wizengamot," Jean said, as if that settled everything.

"It can be wrong," Snape said flatly.

"Can you prove it?" Jean demanded, her eyes flashing.

Hermione held up a hand to stop the argument brewing. "How about we have a democratic vote about the matter?" Hermione offered.

"A quaint Muggle notion," Jean said, "but fine."

"All those in favour of Snape staying with us?" Hermione asked. She raised her own hand. After a moment, Snape put up his hand hesitantly as if he wasn't sure he could vote. She gave him an encouraging nod. Jean mutinously kept her hands down as did Harry, but after another short pause, Will put up a hand.

"Will!" Jean cried, obviously angry.

He shrugged. "Sorry, but as I see it, we four are the only ones with wands. If one of us always stays with him, what harm could he do?" He let out a small breath. "Besides," he gave a small wry smile, "I remember Professor Snape from Hogwarts."

"William Sandhurst," Snape said, his voice expressionless. "1995, Slytherin."

Will smiled. "So you do remember. I used to remember getting pretty good marks in Potions."

"You were one of my best students."

"You were Slytherin?" Harry asked, surprised.

Hermione let out an exasperated sigh. "Don't you realise that house loyalties mean nothing now? I met a Hufflepuff girl who was a _Death Eater_ a few days ago."

Snape blinked, a flicker of surprise over his features. "Rebecca Wang?" he asked.

"Yes," Hermione said, slightly surprised. She didn't think that he would have known every Death Eater to ever grace Hogwarts.

"The only Death Eater Hufflepuff ever produced," Snape said, his voice heavy. "That girl was loyal to a fault. Her parents were Slytherins and determined to rid the world of dirty blood."

"Of course," Harry interjected, sarcasm in his voice, "that wasn't your goal at all, was it, Snape?"

Snape shrugged. "It was once," was all he would say.

With extreme trepidation, Hermione entered the Maximum Security wing one more. Her colleagues, after sticking their heads inside the building, had all seemed a bit squeamish about entering. Harry had volunteered but Hermione, on seeing the rather ashen hue of his face, told him that it was fine. She supposed she could have simply ordered them to come with her, but she didn't think that was an effective way of running a team. Finally, Hermione had asked Snape whether he would come with her. It would mean that the prisoners would see him but she suspected that they wouldn't be lucid enough anyway.

"How many do you think are in here?" she asked Snape as they walked in. Her voice sounded nasal from trying to hold her breath. She briefly thought about a spell to block out the smell but decided that it was too much effort to maintain it all over Azkaban.

"About twenty, I'd guess," he said.

"That means Azkaban holds about a hundred prisoners in total. A thousandth of the wizarding population of Britain." She heard Snape catch his breath suddenly. "Is there something the matter?" she asked.

"My old friend Lucius," Snape whispered, seemingly oblivious to her question. He had walked over to a cell where a figure lay prostrate on the ground.

It didn't even look human, Hermione thought to herself as she followed Snape over, careful to still breathe through her mouth. It didn't really help, though. The smell seemed to be just as strong, even when she breathed through her mouth. The figure on the floor certainly didn't seem like the aristocratic Lucius Malfoy she knew.

"Lucius?" Snape said again, this time louder, his voice cracking on the second syllable.

The figure twitched and then a horrible sound assaulted Hermione's ears. It took her a few moments to realise that Lucius Malfoy was screaming. Not a simple, once-off scream, but a long, drawn-out scream of anguish. Wincing, she listened intently and could make out words in the screams, but nothing that she could recognise.

"He's cursing Bella," Snape whispered, seeming oddly child-like.

Hermione laid a hand on his arm, maybe to comfort him, but maybe simply to reassure herself. It was only now she realised that Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange and all the other Death Eaters had probably grown up together and were childhood friends. She was filled anew with gratitude and amazement at Snape's turn to the Light.

She heard Snape mutter something to herself that sounded like, "Medium Security was nothing compared to this."

And Hermione had to agree. It was nothing compared to the stench and pervasive smell of death that hovered around Maximum Security wing.

The screams stopped.

She suddenly realised that it was probably impossible to ask the people in here to walk out of the wing on their own two legs. "We'll have to take them out one at a time."

"Lucius first," Snape said, his voice for the first time sounding like the Potions Master's voice. But then that small sliver of the past was destroyed by the almost plaintive, "Please," he added afterwards.

Hermione almost asked him not to say the word. It just seemed too strange, too unusual for Snape to be asking anything of her. Snape, in her mind, was always ordering, commanding. Never asking. She saw his dark eyes turned towards and nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Lifting her wand, she touched it on the lock on Malfoy's cell and murmured, "Alohomora." The cells in Azkaban were locked only by the simplest of locking spells, but to unlock them required special augmented wands, like the ones given to them on their arrival at the prison. Hermione hadn't asked what would have happened to anybody trying with any other kind of wand, but she suspected that it wouldn't have been pretty.

"Lucius," Snape asked quietly as they stepped into the cell. "Can you walk?"

The stench was worse in the cell but Hermione was determined to ignore it. She supposed she could have performed a bubble-head charm, but it was designed to filter out oxygen from the surrounding air or water. She suspected that any oxygen filtered out of the air around them would be contaminated anyway. Plus, that particular charm tended to distort one's perspective and Hermione wanted to keep her clear vision.

Malfoy moved suddenly on the floor and, lifting her wand, Hermione saw his face for the first time for two years.

It was beyond awful, beyond anything she saw in any of the Medium or Minimum Security prisoners. Sores seemed to cover his entire face. His long, blond hair was matted, dirty and tangled with his beard. Underneath that mess of hair, Hermione saw glimpses of an emaciated face. As she was looking, the eyes snapped open and immediately closed again.

"T-t-the l-light," Malfoy gasped.

Hermione whispered something and dimmed her wand, giving an involuntary shiver. The eyes were the worst. They were red-rimmed, swollen, but that was nothing compared to when they opened. The eyes seemed glazed over, with the pupils not focusing.

"Can you walk?" Snape asked again. His voice wasn't exactly what could have been called gentle, but was certainly the nicest Hermione had ever heard it.

Slowly, painfully, Malfoy shook his head on the ground. This sent fresh waves of foul smell to Hermione's nostrils.

"I suppose we'll have to levitate him," she said practically.

"Or rather," Snape told her dryly, "you'll have to. I'm unfortunately without wand."

That was exactly what they did. With some trepidation, Hermione stepped forward and with a small flick of her wand and a few muttered words, Lucius Malfoy was levitated into the air.

He muttered incoherent syllables as she directed his body outside, but fortunately he didn't scream again.

She stopped at the door and turned to Snape. "I suppose natural light would be too much for him," she said evenly.

Snape nodded. "My eyes are still sensitive to it," he said quietly. "Lucius, you should probably shut your eyes."

To Hermione's surprise, the other man, still floating in the air in front of her wand, complied. And that was the strange sight that Harry, Will and Jean saw as they saw her and Snape walking out of the building.

"Hermione," Harry was the first person to recover his voice. "Is that Lucius Malfoy?"

"Yes," she said shortly.

"But…" he said.

She interrupted him. "Does that make him less human? No. He receives the same treatment as everybody else." In her heart, she knew that she shouldn't be snapping at Harry when she thought the same thing, but she needed an outlet for her repressed anger at the situation. _These people just don't deserve this treatment, regardless of what they did_, she thought furiously. "I treated Death Eaters yesterday. He's a Death Eater. Is it any different that we were… acquainted with him."

"You were acquainted with Lucius?" Will said, surprise lining his tone.

"Lucius?" Hermione repeated, with a slight frown. "You were on first name terms?"

He gave a short laugh. "Certainly. He was the patron of Slytherin after all. He donated more to my house than all other parents combined. He insisted that we call him by his first name." He glanced at the man who Hermione had lowered to the ground. "He's… changed."

"Well," Harry muttered, "we knew him on less amicable terms."

"What Potter means to say," Snape said dryly, "is that often he and Lucius were at wandpoint."

"That is a mild way of putting it," Harry snapped.

"That," Hermione interrupted before an argument could break out, "is all in the past. We actually do have cells built into the cottage. I suggest we put him there. He certainly warrants twenty-four hour attention." She glanced at Snape and saw a faint flicker of gratitude in his eyes. Obviously, he still held some regard for his old friend. Perhaps the years in Azkaban together had wiped away some of the animosity of the previous years.

"How do you know that other people in Maximum Security don't deserve to be put in the cottage, too?" Harry demanded. "There are only five cells."

"Some of those people," Hermione told him, with a tiny quiver in her voice, "may very well be dead."

- 

As it turned out, she was quite right. There were a total of thirty cells in Maximum Security and only twenty-two of them had been originally filled. Five of those cells held people who had died sometime in the past few weeks, because their bodies were still recognisable. One of those five was Bellatrix Lestrange, and for that Hermione was very grateful. For all her talk about equal treatment, she wasn't sure whether she could have treated a semi-insane vindictive Bellatrix. Another two had died, by the looks of the black slime, quite a long time ago. The heavy moisture in the air had done its work on the bodies and they were completely unrecognisable. Of the other fifteen, three died in the first day that they were removed. Another seven were in a better condition than Malfoy and were moved into the Medium Security wing. The other five and Lucius were put in the cottage.

With teeth gritted, Hermione had managed, through pure power, to add an extra cell to the row of cells. It turned out to be useless because in the next week, two of the six prisoners died.

Lucius Malfoy seemed to be doing relatively well out of the four left. There was nothing seriously wrong with him, no illnesses or broken bones. Using magic, Hermione had managed to shave his head and beard. There was absolutely nothing she could have done to salvage the hair. He was washed – several times by Will and Harry, both of whom found the task detestable.

His sores were dressed by hand though and several times, Hermione had wanted to simply punch or slap the silent, unmoving man who lay in the bed in the cell as she smeared ointment in his wounds. She held her temper with a strict leash. She couldn't afford to become angry and besides, she suspected Azkaban was punishment enough for him. It was funny how the little things irritated her when she spent most of the day by herself looking after somebody she didn't like.

It seemed strange, but she had almost taken over the chore of looking after Lucius Malfoy entirely. Hermione wasn't sure why she had taken over this odious task, but it was well that she did because nobody else – not even Will – was willing to do so. The other prisoners in the cottage cells were looked after by Jean and Will on a rotation basis, but Hermione devoted a lot of her attention to looking after Snape and Lucius.

That's me, she thought wearily one afternoon about two months after they had all moved onto Azkaban Island, the caretaker of former Death Eaters – one repentant, the other unrepentant.

She then mentally kicked herself. It wasn't as though that was all she did. She did do other tasks, such as jointly running the Medium Security wing with Harry. But sometimes it seemed that she was only looking after those two. What's the point? she wondered. To change this place, she answered herself. She gave a wild little giggle and wondered if she was insane to be talking to herself.

"Insanity begins that way."

Hermione jumped and managed to spill an entire bottle of lotion on the ground. With an angry hiss, she knelt down and wiped it up with a rag. When she had finished, she turned to Malfoy, the only person within earshot. "Malfoy," she said flatly. "So you can talk."

Other than the day she and Snape had taken him from the Maximum Security wing, Malfoy hasn't said a single word to or in front of her. She had been beginning to wonder whether he had lost the capability altogether. Somehow she wasn't surprised that he hadn't.

Unlike Snape, his voice didn't seem croaky or changed. Even now after a month, Snape's voice was still not back to normal, but it was changing slowly and reverting to its former tone. Lucius Malfoy's voice, however, only seemed slightly rusty from non-use.

"Do answer me," she said irritably, "now that I know that you can speak."

"And what, pray, would you like me to say?" he asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. "Would you like me to thank you for being so kind and looking after me? Ridiculous. I know you aren't doing this out of any concern for me. Simply trying to satisfy that magnanimous impulse inside of you."

Despite the fact he was speaking civilly, she still felt like throwing something at him, or cursing him, or _anything_. "So you do deign to speak to the Mudblood."

His mouth twisted in what she supposed was a smile. It looked rather bitter and forced, as if the owner simply didn't know how to smile at somebody of inferior blood. "We Malfoys do uphold life debts." He didn't sound particularly pleased.

"You're the only Malfoy left," Hermione pointed out, feeling a nasty twinge of satisfaction as she said the words. And then she remembered Narcissa.

"True," Malfoy said, looking thoughtful. "I wouldn't call my wife a true Malfoy. Deep inside, she is still a Black."

"Bellatrix Lestrange was a Black too," Hermione retorted.

"True," Malfoy repeated, "but she was different." His lips twisted into a nasty smile. "She was better than the rest of us."

With irritation, Hermione picked up a roll of bandages and cut off a piece, tying it around a sore on Lucius's arm rather more tightly than was necessary.

"Good little Mudbloods don't--" Lucius began before he was overtaken by a fit of coughing. "They don't try to kill their patients," he finished.

If Hermione examined her heart of hearts, she would have found that she was rather worried about the persistent coughing. Everything else seemed to go on track, except for the dry cough. It sounded almost like an attack of tuberculosis. She shivered. Her grandfather had died from that particular illness after a visit overseas. It wasn't pretty. Of course, tuberculosis in the magical world was ridiculous. Tuberculosis in a pureblood family was downright impossible. There hadn't been any real research done on it, but as far as Hermione could tell, most serious Muggle illnesses didn't strike witches and wizards at all. When they did strike, it was almost always on Muggle-born witches and wizards who hadn't lived in the magical world for a while.

It almost seems as though the magical world itself provided immunity for its inhabitants, she thought as she cleared away.

Hermione determinedly decided to ignore the taunt Malfoy shot at her ancestry. "I'm not trying to kill you, Malfoy."

"Then kindly give me back the circulation in my arm," he said smoothly.

_Even when Lucius Malfoy is asking for things_, she thought irritably, _he still manages to sound imperious._ She loosened the bandage in his arm. Then, with more anger than she meant to show, Hermione scraped her chair back. The wooden legs made an appropriately screeching noise on the stone floor.

Malfoy winced at the sound. "I don't suppose my old friend Severus can find his way here to speak to me? I seem to remember him."

Hermione pursed her lips. She thought that he would ask for that sooner or later. "You seem to be under a illusion, Mr. Malfoy," she told him. "You're a prisoner here, not a guest. Just because the conditions are better than before does not means that you are any less of an inmate. You will be transferred back to the normal cells once I have determined that you are physically well."

"Severus is a prisoner too, isn't he?" Malfoy said slowly. "Yet I remember him walking around without chains." He rattled his own for emphasis.

"_Severus_," Hermione bit off, "is no longer allied to Voldemort."

"Neither am I," Malfoy told her, giving her an intense look. "Unless I am mistaken, he is dead and I do not find it advantageous to be allied to a dead man."

She rolled her eyes. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt for old friends to have a reunion," she acknowledged.

"Good little Mudblood," Malfoy said, almost affectionately.

Hermione glared at him, her earlier promise to herself to ignore his comments forgotten. "If," she said icily, "you wish to remain alive and reasonably well cared for, you should remember that my name is Miss Granger, not 'Mudblood'. If you call me that name again, remember that Azkaban Island is far removed from the Ministry proper and deaths from injuries are quite common." She felt guilty threatening Malfoy but suspected that threatening solitary confinement was rather useless in this circumstance.

She could have sworn that he gave her a slightly surprised, appreciative look. "You would have made a good Slytherin, _Miss Granger_," he said. "If only it wasn't for the unfortunate circumstances of your birth. You are aware," he continued, "of a move to recruit you into the Death Eaters during your seventh year, are you not?"

"I was made aware of it," she said carefully, wondering where he was going with this.

"Think about it," he said cryptically.

"Thank you for that piece of advice," she said sarcastically and left the cell. Perhaps I should ask Snape whether he wants to talk to Malfoy, she thought as she locked the cell behind her. Something within her rebelled at the idea of two former Death Eaters meeting. Snape was on our side, Hermione reminded herself yet again.

Getting back to her own rooms, only three doorways away from the cells, Hermione found a copy of the Daily Prophet lying on her bed. She noticed that it was Harry's copy.

Hermione supposed she could spend half an hour or so reading it. There was nothing else to do. She hadn't received any outside correspondence for the entire month other than Ron's letter at the beginning of it. It was rather disappointing in a way. She thought something might have been happening with one of her former colleagues… but obviously not since he hadn't even bothered to write.

She blinked slowly as she took in the headline.

Public Pleased With Ministry 

The public is never pleased with the Ministry, she thought, bewildered and slightly worried. The article seemed to be about record approval ratings (something the wizarding world had adopted from the Muggle) for the Ministry and the new Minister. But, she thought, I suppose it's nothing new. The _Daily Prophet _had always been a paper less concerned with truth than making sure that the Ministry was happy.

Quickly, she skimmed the other articles.

New Shop Open in Diagon Alley 

_Minister's Wife Holds Ball _

_Hogwarts Open Again After Christmas Break _

_All Quiet On The Muggle Front: An Editorial View On Muggle-Magi Relations_

She flipped a few more pages, but the articles all seemed to be the same. Just normal, bland stuff. Perhaps it was a slow news day, she thought, but was doubtful. The Daily Prophet was never this … boring. Even during Fudge's years, things happened and were reported. Yes, most of them were outright lies or at best sensational journalism, but they were still reported.

From this copy, as far as she could tell, the wizarding world was peaceful, happy and better than it had ever been. Hermione thought that she should have been pleased about this, but she wasn't. There was something that didn't feel right.

She hoped that it was just her imagination.

Author Notes: Thank you to Raspberri13, BrennaM, breziebear, pyewacket, whogirl, A Miller,and alicat999 who reviewed Chapter 2! Hint, I respond to all reviews, so if you leave an email address (or are logged in and have an email address in your profile), I'll thank you personally. :) 3 all of you because I love reviews. Constructive criticism is very welcome. As is, well, any sort of comment really.


	4. Chapter 4

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

Chapter 4

"My old friend," Snape said calmly as he opened the door to Lucius's cell.

Lucius looked up from where he was reading a book. "My old friend," he repeated.

Snape looked at the book that Lucius was holding and was surprised. "_A Christmas Carol _by Charles Dickens? A Muggle text? I'm surprised at you, Lucius."

Lucius shrugged. "Granger wouldn't give me anything else and I'm tired of counting the stone bricks." He gave a dry cough.

Snape was mildly amused at the vitriol with which Lucius managed to say Hermione's surname. "What did she have to threaten to get you to call her that?" he asked.

"Oh, the usual," Lucius said. "Death, serious injuries. That kind of thing."

"I would have never thought she had that in her." Snape was surprised.

"She is a surprising witch." Lucius gave Snape a calculating look. "So, Severus, why are you here? I suppose it's too much to ask that this is a friendly visit between two old friends."

"Indeed," Snape agreed. Privately, he wondered why he was here too, but despite his dislike of his old friend's political views, he did trust Lucius's intelligence. "We stopped being friends the day I realised what the Dark Lord really stood for. I suppose I can partly thank your sister-in-law for that realisation."

Lucius gave a sly smile. "I'm sure Bella had her fun with you that time. You can't blame her." He paused. "I've just noticed, Severus. You still call our Lord by his title."

"And that particular habit saved my life many a time," Snape said mildly. He was interested that Lucius picked that up but not particularly surprised. Lucius was always good at the details. Snape produced a copy of the Daily Prophet. "Take a look at this."

He watched as Lucius's eyes skimmed down the front page quickly and watched as the expression of disquiet grew. "You see it, too."

"See what?" Lucius replied, too quickly.

"Don't lie to me," Snape said. "It's in the gaps between the words, the spaces between the lines. You can see it as clearly as I can."

"Who is the new Minister?" Lucius asked. "Who is this Jack Corley?"

Snape shrugged. "I'm not sure. He's certainly very charismatic, according to Hermione. Newly married. No idea who the wife is." He pointed towards the newspaper. "What else do you notice?"

Lucius's brow furrowed and he read the page again. Then he flipped to the other pages. "The names," he said quietly.

"Exactly!" Snape was triumphant. "They're almost all new. How often does the Wizengamot change its members? Usually once every ten years as they die out. I don't recognise any of the Wizengamot members mentioned in this article." He stabbed one yellowed finger at the article on the second page.

"You think that a new Dark Lord is rising," Lucius said bluntly.

Snape nodded. He could always trust his old friend to come to the crux of the issue. "Or he has already risen," he said flatly. "Can you recognise any of the names of the Ministry members? There is no mention of anybody from before. There is no bad news between those pages. It's not normal. And frankly, it scares me more than another spell behind bars without proper food or water."

"Well," Lucius said, putting the newspaper aside and staring up at Snape. "It isn't as though we can do anything about it, even if I had any inclination to do anything."

"Already planning to join?"

Lucius gave a slow smile. "Never again, my friend. Never again." He frowned. "Jack Corley. The name is familiar. I just can't place it."

"That's never good news," Snape said dryly. "When Lucius can recognise a name, it usually doesn't bode well for the general populace."

Giving a dry laugh, Lucius said, "I don't know all the Dark Arts players in the world."

"Just most of them."

"Probably."

"Speak to Hermione about this," Snape said abruptly. "I've tried. She doesn't – refuses – to listen. She simply can't believe that Corley is – hell, has already, by the looks of it – going to take over the wizarding world."

"That isn't necessarily true," Lucius pointed out.

"But you don't believe that."

"No," Lucius admitted.

"He's just doing it relatively slowly, that's all. First by suppressing our media. I heard Will talking about how the Quibbler was dismantled by the Minister almost three weeks ago. Just because he isn't running around firing _Avada Kedavra_ at people doesn't mean that he isn't planning on taking over our world."

"And providing that I want to tell her this theory of yours, why would she even listen to me?"

"Hermione knows you're intelligent. Why else would she play chess with you in her spare time?" Snape gave Lucius a pointed look. "Perhaps she'll listen to you. If you at least try, I'll see what I can do about keeping you here instead of getting you sent back to Maximum Security wing. That cough of yours really needs some work."

With another sharp cough, Lucius glared at Snape. "You are very observant."

"Necessary to survival," Snape said dismissively, and walked towards the door of the cell. "If I'm right," he said, almost casually, "then it is unlikely that Corley would let us live. It's too much of a risk to his own power."

Lucius was silent behind him.

"You told Malfoy to talk to me, didn't you."

Snape turned around and was confronted by an angry Hermione Granger. "So what if I did?" he said carefully.

She glared at him. "I already told you, Severus, that Corley would never do anything like this. Even if he did, wouldn't other people notice? Other people on the mainland? Wouldn't it be obvious? After all, he's only been in power for about two-and-a-half." A brief flicker of uncertainty flashed in her eyes. "You're being ridiculous. Like Mad-Eye Moody. You're seeing things. Maybe we really do have peace."

"Are you saying that because you really believe it or simply because Corley gave you this job?" Snape asked bluntly.

Hermione's lips tightened. "Perhaps, Severus," she snapped angrily, "you are delusional after too many Dementor-induced visions. Malfoy, too."

A wave of red-hot anger swamped him and unconsciously he reached down for a wand that was no longer there.

"I'm sorry," Hermione whispered, looking mortified.

Snape waved a hand and brushed past her roughly. A part of him taunted himself. Perhaps you are insane, Severus. Perhaps you are.

- 

"You can't honestly believe the tripe in there," Malfoy remarked as he pointed towards the copy of _The Daily Prophet_ lying on his cell floor.

Hermione glared at him. "How about," she said frostily, "we drop that subject." With vehemence, she told one of her pawns to move forward two spaces.

Malfoy shrugged and easily captured the stray pawn. "Tell Severus I tried again," he told her.

She glared at him, angry with herself that she had let him get such an easy point. "You and Severus are simply delusional," she snapped.

"Perhaps we are," Malfoy didn't sound particularly worried about it. "Well, then, if we cannot talk about current affairs, then perhaps we can talk about past affairs. It is tiresome sitting here alone all day and I do not find your … company as wearisome as I had thought."

Hermione gave a snort that she immediately tried to suppress. "Why thank you, Mr. Malfoy," she said sarcastically.

"It wouldn't kill you to call me by my given name," he commented, coughing sharply. "Tickle in my throat."

"You can stand to have a Mudblood say your name?" Hermione was genuinely curious. Malfoy – Lucius – was treating her more like a… if not a friend, then a companion.

Lucius shrugged. "It doesn't bother me," he said.

To Hermione, it sounded overly casual. "Well, Lucius," she said, trying the name out, "if I am to call you by that, then perhaps you would like to use my given name as well. Common courtesy, of course." There, she thought, with a hidden smirk of satisfaction, see how he takes that!

He wasn't ruffled at all. "Well, then, Hermione, would you like to discuss past affairs?"

Hermione moved one of her knights before responding. "Depends on what you wish to talk about."

"If I'm not mistaken, I mentioned to you a few days back about the move to recruit you as a Death Eater in your seventh year. You seemed rather interested."

"Morbid curiosity," she said blandly. "Do continue with specifics."

Lucius gave her a crooked smile. "You were living proof of fallacies in our beliefs. We either needed to kill you, or make you join us. There was no other way. It was eventually decided to kill you. Obviously, we didn't succeed too well with that."

"Fortunately," she muttered. Then she looked at him sharply. "So you could see the fallacies in what you preached."

"Well, we didn't preach, per se. Not to _your_ generation anyway. But I suggest you stop making allusions to my intelligence. I could see the fallacies, as you call them, but I chose to ignore them. The others?" Lucius shrugged. "Well, I can't speak for them. I doubt Avery or Goyle could. I was never entirely sure of Crabbe. Bella, well, she was a force unto herself. She both saw and did not see them."

"Doublethink," Hermione murmured.

Lucius raised an eyebrow.

"Muggle term coined by one of their authors," she elaborated. "Essentially the art of holding two opposing beliefs in one's mind and believing equally in both of them, able to switch between the two effortlessly."

"Sounds like Bella," he said. Lucius then gave a rather strange smile. "I don't suppose you noticed then that you used "their" in reference to Muggles. You just put yourself on our side."

"Not on your side," Hermione said stiffly. She _had_ noticed thatbut by the time she had, the words had already come out. "I'm no Death Eater."

"Pity," he commented, and sounded almost sad. "We might have won if you were on our side."

Hermione chose to ignore that comment. "How could you fight for a cause that you didn't believe in?"

He quirked an eyebrow. "You're supposing that just because I could see fallacies in our arguments, that I didn't believe in the core cause? That's where you are wrong."

"So you do believe in killing off all Muggle-borns and Muggles." Hermione couldn't keep the note of incredulity from her voice.

He shook his head. "Not killing. You have to admit that Muggles are below us. Look at how they destroy this planet without a single thought. Animals, all of them. Mu-Muggle-borns, on the other hand, most of you can't compete on the same level as the ordinary wizard. I admit, every now and again, there are brilliant Muggle-borns. The Dark Lord was one. You're another. But they are far and few between."

Hermione wasn't sure whether she liked having herself compared to the Dark Lord. Her lips thinned. "You are saying that my parents are animals."

He shrugged. "Do you have a pet?"

Hermione frowned. "Yes, a cat."

"And you love that cat, correct? But it is still an animal. Muggles are the same."

"My parents are not the same as my pet cat," Hermione said furiously. "It's completely different."

"How?" Lucius asked.

"They're human, for one."

"That's simply the outside," Lucius told her. "Muggles are to us as cats are to humans."

"Ha!" she said triumphantly. "You just admitted that wizards and Muggles are all humans."

"But different levels of humans."

Hermione let out a long breath and counted up to ten. They were obviously going around in circles. She changed the topic. "If you had recruited me, how would you have explained it away to the rest of the Death Eaters?"

"We wouldn't," Lucius said simply. "Very few Death Eaters knew of the Dark Lord's true heritage before that fact was made public knowledge. You would have simply undergone a magical transformation and gone to Durmstrang to complete your education. Hermione Granger would've disappeared from Hogwarts, an unfortunate casualty."

She shivered. "I remember some Ravenclaws coming up to me during my seventh year who said that I could save my family."

"That was without permission from the Dark Lord," Lucius sounded irritated. "They had no right to do that, but yes, they were probably trying to recruit you in an all-too-obvious fashion. No subtlety."

"Well, I never would have…" Hermione began when she heard footsteps. Pushing back her stool, she stood up and walked over to the bars of the cell. "Harry!" she exclaimed as she saw him round the corner.

"Hedwig just gave me a letter for you," he told her. Hermione saw him eye Lucius balefully. "Why do you spend your time here?" he demanded.

"Lucius is interesting company," she said quietly and heard a faint snort from behind her.

"Interesting company!" Harry said loudly and angrily. "He's a Death Eater."

"And," she replied, a little coldness in her own tone, "I seem to see you talking to Severus a lot lately too."

"That's completely different," Harry snapped. He gave one more glare behind her before turning on his heel. "I'll see you later," he said, and Hermione watched as he rounded the corner once more.

She glanced downwards at the letter held in her hands. The scrawl at the front of the letter told her that it was from Ron. She slit it open with a finger and pulled out a very short note.

_Hermione, _

_I'm coming to Azkaban for a visit very soon. Ministry's becoming unhealthy. _

_Ron_

"From a boyfriend back in the Ministry?" Lucius commented as she absentmindedly sat down again.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said sharply. She stared at the letter and bit her lower lip.

"Is there something the matter?" Lucius sounded both curious and worried.

"Not that you would care," she snapped. Then her brow furrowed as she remembered what Severus and Lucius had been trying to tell her. "It seems Ron believes the same as you and Severus."

"Weasley? He's working in the Ministry?"

"Yes," she said, glaring at him. "The Weasleys are quite influential nowadays."

"Not influential enough if he's anywhere near as worried as you seem to be," he pointed out.

"I'm not worried." Hermione forced her tone to be even but somehow she knew that Lucius wouldn't believe her. He had probably been trained by the Dark Lord to read the inflection in people's voices. She turned her attention back to the chess game. "Let's continue."

They played in silence for another few minutes before Lucius commented, "I see my friend Severus has taken an interest in Potter."

Hermione, despite her inability to read tones in speech, could tell that there was something significant in what he just said. Now she simply needed to figure out what it was.

- 

Harry came out of his room, bleary-eyed and dressed only in his dressing gown. He made his way out to what was appointed the dining room of the small cottage. There was already somebody at the table.

"Good morning," Snape said evenly, as Harry sat himself down and poured a glass of orange juice.

"'morning," he mumbled as he drank the juice. It was freshly squeezed and Harry spent a brief moment wondering where the house-elves had managed to get oranges. There certainly weren't any orange trees on Azkaban Island. He gave Snape a brief smile. They had managed to get a certain verbal rapport going in the past few days and he was glad. Hermione was busying herself with Lucius Malfoy most of the time. Will was a reasonably nice bloke, but there really wasn't anything Harry had to talk to him about. They somehow didn't click. Harry had the suspicion that he liked Hermione but had never asked. Hermione's other friend Jean was pretty and bubbly, but Harry found her rather empty-headed and far too ready to believe anything that was thrown at her. He supposed he could have talked to the prisoners, but somehow that didn't feel right. All in all, he was grateful that he could talk to Snape.

"You look tired," Snape commented.

Harry nodded. "Who would have thought that running a Medium Security wing in a prison would be so much work," he said sarcastically. "Hermione wants the prisoners to have daily exercise so I have to supervise them."

"How fortunate for the prisoners," Snape said flatly.

"Sorry," Harry apologised as he buttered himself a slice of thick toast. "I'd forgotten."

A corner of Snape's mouth quirked up in a brief smile. "I'll take it that Azkaban hasn't affected me much."

Harry paused before he responded, not sure how well his response would be taken. "Well, it seems to have mellowed your personality some." He regretted it as soon as he had said it because of the dark look Snape fixed him with.

"I wasn't aware that my personality needed mellowing," Snape said.

Harry stared.

"I'm joking, Harry," Snape finally said after Harry had been staring for almost a whole minute. "Now stop staring at me."

Blinking, Harry gave a wry smile. "Sorry, I didn't realise I was." What he didn't say was that he found the other man rather intriguing to stare at. If you stared at Severus Snape for long enough, layers, long hidden from the general public, began to emerge. He suspected that Snape himself didn't know this. Then what Snape had said before began to sink in. "You were joking?"

Snape sighed. "Well, I needn't bother from now on since you obviously don't have a sense of humour."

"Sorry," Harry muttered and then frowned. "Was that another joke?"

"Don't worry about it," Snape said, sounding very irritated. There was a knock on the door. Snape rose from his chair and waved a hand at Harry. "I'll get it," he said.

Harry heard footsteps to the door, the door unlatching and then a very familiar sounding exclamation of surprise. He jumped up and walked quickly to the door. "Ron!"

Ron grinned at him. "Surprised to see me so soon, Harry?" he said.

"Sort of," Harry admitted. "I haven't seen you for such a long time."

"Things have been rather… busy at the Ministry," Ron said vaguely.

Harry saw his friend's eyes slide to where Snape was still standing by the door, an black eyebrow quirked. "Ron, you remember Severus – Professor Snape - right?" he said when he saw his friend staring.

"Severus?" Ron repeated. He then frowned. "Weren't you put into Azkaban?"

Harry could have hit his friend over the top of his head for that comment. Snape had immediately frozen at those words. "That, Mr. Weasley," he said icily, "would be the precise reason I am here."

Ron's frown lines deepened. "Then why aren't you in a cell?"

Quickly, before Snape could explode, Harry grabbed Ron's arm and steered him into the cottage. "I'll show you your room. And then you can tell me why you're here. Your note was rather… confusing."

As they walked off, Harry looked back over his shoulder and saw Snape still standing by the door, almost frozen. The only indication that he wasn't was the rapid breathing seen by the flaring of the nostrils.

"Ron," Harry whispered to his friend once he was sure that they were out of earshot. "Don't say things like that. Severus was on our side during the war." Inwardly, he winced slightly. He remembered Hermione telling him something like that almost two months ago. Obviously staying here at Azkaban had changed him.

Ron stared at him as they walked into Harry's room. "Why are you calling him by his given name?"

"And what else should I call him?" Harry was irritated. "Professor Snape? Snape? It's only polite that I call him Severus. We're all adults here."

"I remember you singing a different tune the last time we spoke."

"I've changed," Harry snapped. And, he thought, that's true. He had changed. Being at Azkaban, strangely enough, had given him a life that simply wasn't there before, even while he was playing Quidditch. He then took a calming breath. "Anyway, Ron, Hermione and I were rather worried when we got your note. The Ministry's _unhealthy?_"

At these words, the rather casual tone with which Ron was criticising Harry with disappeared immediately. As Harry watched, his old friend seemed to freeze up, and then glance around suspiciously.

"There's nobody here," he pointed out.

Ron held up a finger in a motion for silence. He then took out his wand and drew a rune for silence in the air. It shimmered for a second and then disappeared. "There, we're now warded against eavesdroppers," he said quietly.

"But the only people on the island who have free motion are me, Hermione, Will, Jean and Severus," Harry said, frowning slightly. Ron was beginning to scare him. The security seemed superfluous, but the fact that Ron seemed to find it necessary was rather frightening. "And, of course, the house-elves, who are loyal."

"To whom?" Ron said, a sharp edge in his voice. "Remember Kreacher? These house-elves are most likely loyal to our Ministry."

"And what's wrong with that?"

"Our Ministry, as I said in my note, is rather unhealthy."

Harry blinked. "And that's a rather cryptic statement, Ron," he said.

"Corley," Ron began, when suddenly the door to the room was pushed open and Hermione walked in.

"Ron!" she exclaimed and ran over to give him a hug. "Severus said that you were here. Why all the silence?"

Harry watched as Ron waved his wand in the air and abruptly thought of something. "Ron, how come your wand works?" he asked.

Ron didn't answer, but extricated himself from Hermione's hug and went to shut the door again. As his old friends watched, he drew a rune under the door that looked vaguely familiar to Harry and then drew another in the air. "Runes for no interrupting and silence," Ron explained as he sat down once more. "They should last for half an hour, with luck."

"I know what they are," Hermione said, an edge of irritation in her voice. "I studied Ancient Runes, remember? But why do we need them?"

"You never know who's listening."

"Ron thinks that the house-elves are reporting to the Ministry," Harry told her.

Hermione stared. "That's ridiculous," she finally said. "They aren't Kreacher. We're their masters on this island. They wouldn't do that."

Ron shrugged. "I didn't say that, Harry," he said. "I said that they _might_ be. Your Jean and Will might be as well. So might Snape. Hell, you two might be reporting to Corley and I may be signing my death certificate by talking to both of you." His bright blue eyes looked each of them over before going back to fix on a point on the wall. "But I'll trust that our friendship still stands."

"Ron!" Hermione exclaimed. "What's gotten into you? You're so… different."

He gave a rather bitter sounding laugh. "Thinking about your own survival can do that to a person."

"But Voldemort is gone," Harry pointed out.

"Harry, you didn't think that he was the only threat to the survival and freedom of our world, did you?" Ron shook his head slowly. "I'm beginning to think that Corley's worse. He's certainly smarter."

"Don't be ridiculous," Hermione snapped. "Corley's no Dark Lord. He's a perfectly nice man who wants peace and prosperity for the wizarding world." Her voice faltered slightly. "I'm sure he has good intentions," she said.

"Ah, so you've read his campaign statements, too. You do realise that we can have peace and prosperity while under an authoritarian regime, don't you?" Ron gave a bitter laugh. "I'm beginning to think that I should have never joined the Department of Security. Perhaps if I hadn't learned about security issues, then I wouldn't have noticed this."

Harry looked at Hermione and saw that she had a rather mutinous expression on her face. He suspected that she wouldn't be too accepting of what he was about to say, but he felt that he owed it to Ron to say it. "Snape and Malfoy have been saying the same thing."

"Lucius Malfoy," Ron said, mild contempt in his voice. "Well then, what interesting company you guys have been keeping. Former Death Eaters."

"I'm transforming Azkaban to modern hygiene standards," Hermione said tightly. "Lucius is ill, and since I have mediwitch training, I need to take care of him, as distasteful as that may be."

"You don't need to call him by his first name though," Ron pointed out. "It seems to me that you guys have changed more than I have."

"I think," she said quietly, "that we've all changed more than we want to admit. When was the last time we were all together like this? A year or so ago, I think. We're not in school anymore. We grew up. And if I want to call people by their given names, Ron, I will."

He shrugged. "It's up to you." He then turned to Harry.

Harry began to feel uncomfortable. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Did you ever wonder why your letters to the old crowd never got responses?"

"You know something about that?" Harry asked. "I was wondering why, but I just thought… I don't know what I was thinking, actually."

"The old crowd's gone," Ron said bluntly. "They've either all died 'normal' deaths within the last six months, or they've been arrested for various treason charges. Their trials have been closed to the general public." His eyes were over-bright. "My family – what's left of them – disappeared too."

Harry laid a sympathetic hand on his arm but inside was wondering why Ron hadn't told him about this sooner. They had grown apart after the war but he still thought his old friend would tell him things.

Hermione's mouth fell open. "But where are they?" she exclaimed. "Shouldn't they have been sent here to Azkaban?"

"Apparently not," Ron said. "And that's what's gotten me worried. All signs point to the fact that Corley's established his own prison somewhere in London."

"That's preposterous!"

"Why, Hermione, why?" Harry said suddenly. "You said yourself that you've only met Corley once and wondered where the Dementors were taken to. Isn't it obvious? They've been sent to the new prison."

"But, but --" Hermione seemed determined to prove them wrong. "Why are we here then?"

Ron shrugged. "That's irrelevant."

"It's very relevant," Hermione snapped. "Why haven't other people seen this? If all this has been happening, then shouldn't other people have noticed?"

"People are too thankful that the Voldemort Wars are over. They're not looking for another war, so they simply don't see it. Besides, the Quibbler is gone. The Daily Prophet is completely and utterly under the Minister's control. Where else do people get their news? The old crowd was never good at mingling with the general wizarding populace anyway."

"Other people would have noticed," Hermione said adamantly.

"Why don't you ask the Minister yourself then," Ron said. "Ask him why he's appointed you here in Azkaban. Ask him whether there is another prison in London."

"I will!" Hermione said furiously. "I will." She stormed out of the room, which sealed behind her.

"Good luck." Ron's voice was quiet. He looked at Harry. "It's risky me even being here. If Corley knew that I suspected, then he'd throw me away with the rest of my family."

"Let's just hope he doesn't," Harry said tightly.

- 

Hermione left for the Ministry the next day and was rather thankful for the excuse to leave Azkaban Island. The small island was getting a little too claustrophobic.

Arriving at the Ministry Headquarters in London in good time, she dialled in and deposited both her wands at the gate. "Hermione Granger, Caretaker of Azkaban," she told the wizard at the gate.

He waved her through.

Standing in front of the Minister's office suite, Hermione was rather apprehensive. He did say that I could come back and visit anytime, she pointed out to herself. Of course, she thought, he probably didn't mean with no notice. She walked into the suite and was immediately stopped by a tall, grey-haired woman who had her hair coiled tightly around her head and was wearing dark brown robes.

"How may I help you?" she asked.

Hermione read the nametag off the woman's chest. "Secretary Sampson, I would like to see the Minister. My name is Hermione Granger."

Sampson's face changed imperceptibly, so slightly that Hermione wasn't even sure it had. She certainly couldn't have said what it changed to or from. "You're the Caretaker of Azkaban, aren't you?" she said crisply. "Well then, the Minister isn't too busy at the moment so you can go right through but in the future, Miss Granger, please make an appointment."

Hermione nodded politely and walked past the woman towards the inner door. She knocked on the door.

"Who is it, Margaret?"

She opened the door and stepped inside, closing it with a click behind her. "Minister Corley," Hermione said politely, "I hope I'm not interrupting you, but I hoped to have a few words with you. Secretary Sampson said that I could come right through."

The Minister set down his reading glasses and gave her a warm smile. "Certainly, Miss Granger, what brings you over from Azkaban? The progress reports you send my office seem very promising." He waved her towards a chair in front of his desk.

No equal treatment today, Hermione thought with faint amusement as she sat down on the plush chair. She gave a small sigh as it seemed to mould itself to her body.

"A lovely chair, is it not?" Corley said, with another easy smile. "It was imported from Egypt. I find Egyptian wizards make some of the best furniture."

"It is very nice," Hermione admitted.

"So, Miss Granger, what did you want to talk to me today about? I'm afraid I only have a few minutes. I need to get these papers signed."

"I just," Hermione faltered slightly. Suddenly what she was about to ask sounded terribly stupid. But still, she told herself, what's the worst he could do? Laugh, probably. "I actually have two questions. I could have submitted them in writing, but since I was in London and everything, I thought to come here in person." She gave what she hoped was an easy laugh but probably came out sounding like a strangled kitten.

"Go ahead," Corley said congenially.

"I want to thank you again for giving me Azkaban to take care of," Hermione said. "It's a very rewarding job."

Corley looked amused. "Surely you didn't come all this way simply to say that?"

"No," she admitted. "I just was wondering why you appointed me to Azkaban Prison. Surely there were people with more experience with running prisoners. Some of the Aurors, perhaps?"

"But Miss Granger," Corley told her, leaning forward and looking at her in the eye, "their experience would have worked against their favour. It was your precise inexperience that was needed. We needed somebody to look at Azkaban with a fresh eye. Somebody who was willing to change it and take drastic action. And even if I say so myself, you have done a splendid job."

Hermione could feel herself turning red. "Thank you, Minister."

He smiled again. "And what was the other question, Miss Granger?"

She bit her lip. "I have a friend at the Ministry," she said, deciding at the last minute not to mention Ron's name. Somehow she suspected that Corley knew exactly who she was talking about anyway. "He wrote to me recently and said that he thought that there may be another prison in London. I was just wondering, why not for the sake of efficiency, why not integrate that prison – if there is one – with Azkaban?" She knew she sounded incredibly flustered.

He laughed. "Is that all? Miss Granger, you have nothing to worry about. Your job as caretaker is safe." He looked at his watch. "Now I'm sorry, but I must get back to work."

She stood up. "But…" she said, knowing fully well that he hadn't even answered her question, which, she admitted to herself, was sort of unasked.

"I'm sorry," he said firmly as he steered her towards the door. "I hope you continue to find your job fulfilling," he told her as he shut the door in her face.

Hermione stared at the closed door for a full minute before leaving. That was abrupt. It suddenly occurred to her that Corley wasn't that good at alleviating people's worries.

She suddenly remembered that there was a photo on the Minister's desk that wasn't there the last time she was there. The woman, she thought as she walked out of the Ministry, collecting her wands in the process, - the Minister's wife - looked very familiar.

The realisation hit Hermione with the strength of an icy shower.

"You don't think that Hermione is in any danger talking to Corley, do you?" Harry asked.

The four of them - Harry, Severus, Lucius and Ron – were sitting in Harry's room discussing the situation. Ron protested at including the two former Death Eaters in the current situation, but as Harry pointed out, they were the people who first alerted him and Hermione to the problem. They could have had the conversation in Lucius's cell, but security-wise, it was a nightmare for Ron. Hence, Ron had simply cast a non-violence spell on Lucius. It was a simple spell, easily renewed every week.

Harry had asked why it wasn't used more often and Ron had explained that it was a blood-based spell and was considered borderline Dark Arts. Lucius had seemed amused at the using of the spell, but Harry had seemed slightly shocked. Ron was rather sick of the expression of half-amazement, half-almost-terror on his old friend's face. He hadn't changed that much. At least, he didn't think he had.

"I doubt it she'll be in danger," Ron said, hoping that he was right. "He put her here in Azkaban for a reason. He probably won't want to jeopardise it by killing her."

Harry paled. "You think he might do that?"

"I hope not," Ron said grimly.

"If I were him," Lucius said, casually, "I wouldn't. It would create too many questions. From what I saw in The Daily Prophet, it was a big issue that Azkaban was going to be transformed by the Muggle-born hero Hermione Granger. It would be bad publicity."

Ron glared at him and wished that he would shut up. "What would you know?" he said, knowing that his tone was rather childish and spiteful. "You were on the losing side."

Lucius simply looked at him. "That I might have been, but only because the Dark Lord made some unfortunate choices that disagreed with popular public opinion. This Corley fellow seems quite intelligent."

Ron thought that he seemed to regret the fact he couldn't leave Azkaban and publicly declare his allegiance to Corley and said so.

"Oh, shut up, Ron," Harry said in an irritated tone but Lucius seemed amused. "What else do we know about Corley, anyway?" Harry said after a small silence.

Ron shrugged. "He _is_ intelligent. He's taking over the wizarding world slowly and quietly so that nobody knows anything until it's too late. He's newly married." He shot a glance at Lucius and wondered whether the other man knew.

Harry obviously noticed the look and frowned. "Do you know who the wife is?"

Biting his bottom lip, Ron nodded.

"Well, don't just sit there," Snape snapped. "Tell us, Weasley."

Ron sat there and looked at Lucius. He watched as understanding slowly dawned on the older man's face.

"It's Narcissa, isn't it?" Lucius said quietly.

"Narcissa Malfoy?" Harry exclaimed.

"Not Malfoy now," Ron said, in a slightly malicious tone. "Narcissa Corley. It was a quiet wedding, but there was an article about it in the Daily Prophet afterwards. Apparently she reverted back to Narcissa Black before the wedding."

"I suppose there's no question of joining Corley now, is there?" Snape said mildly.

Ron wasn't even sure whether he was joking or not. "Why?" he asked.

"Narcissa was rather… angry when I was incarcerated for the second time," Lucius informed them. "She broke our vows then and there. I can't imagine she's calmed down in regards to me."

"You don't seem angry that she's married somebody else," Harry said.

"It was bound to happen," Lucius said, seemingly impassive. "It doesn't affect me."

Author Notes: Thank you to breziebear, A. Miller, TA Salmalin, Raspberri13, Polar Thestral, shy-n-great, Dominique Fade, whogirl, dancing in rain, BrennaM and alicat999 for their reviews. :) I do email responses to all reviews, but I usually look at the author page for the email address. That means if you don't show your email address then you don't get a review response. But I do read all reviews and appreciate them nonetheless.

Constructive criticism, praise, ramblings, etc are all welcome. ;)


	5. Chapter 5

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

Chapter 5

Hermione could feel a sense of oppression as she took a little speedboat back to Azkaban Island. As she got back to the small, dark island, she saw Harry standing at the edge of the main building waiting for her.

She walked over and he hugged her. "I'm glad that the dire predictions were unfounded."

She nodded. "So am I," she said quietly. "And I'm beginning to think that Ron might be right." She gave a wry smile. "I know I don't admit that I'm wrong often, but this may be one of those rare instances. The Minister was terribly evasive." Suddenly, Hermione remembered something and grabbed Harry's arm.

"What?" he asked.

"I just remembered. Do you know who the Minister's wife is?"

"Ron told us the day before yesterday."

Hermione let out a slow breath as they walked into the cottage. The pervasive smell of Azkaban, though diminished during her two months there, had not left. She had simply gotten used to it. "Doesn't that sound like an awful coincidence?"

He nodded. "I suspect that she's somewhere behind all this."

"That's makes two of us." Hermione paused before she walked into the dining room of the cottage. She could hear voices behind the door. "What does Lucius think?" she asked in a half-whisper.

"I can't tell," Harry admitted. "Ron thinks that he's behind it, but then, Ron thinks that Severus is behind it as well." He shook his head.

"I can't imagine that Lucius is behind it," she said in a fierce whisper. "He was rotting in Azkaban when we first came. But what does he think about Narcissa being Corley's wife?"

Harry shrugged. "He didn't seem to care."

Hermione looked incredulous. She then pushed open the door and saw the five of them sitting around the table having an early dinner. "Good evening," she said, with a brief smile and sat down at the table.

The dinner was a rather quiet affair. Several times during the dinner, Hermione suspected that Will was about to say something, but didn't. He suspects something, she thought.

Lucius was uncharacteristically quiet and didn't say more than a few words to her. After dinner as she was walking back to her room, he waylaid her.

"May I have a word?" he asked.

"Certainly," she said. Then she frowned. "How come you aren't in your cell?"

"Non-violence spell," he said.

"Isn't that blood-based?"

He gave a brief smile. "You surprise me sometimes, Hermione, with your knowledge of the Dark Arts."

"I like to be knowledgeable," she admitted rather defensively. She opened the door to her own room and closed the door once they were inside. "So what did you want to talk about?"

As she watched, his grey eyes narrowed. She fought the urge to take a step backwards. Non-violence spell, she chanted to herself. "Why didn't you tell me about Narcissa?" he demanded.

Hermione frowned. Was that all he wanted to know? "Why do you want to know?" she asked.

"I just want to know," his voice was stiff. "Why didn't you tell me? Didn't you think that it was important? That my old wife was now the wife of the new Minister who, by the way, is the newest Dark Lord. Did you think that it would make me angry? Well, guess what? It did." He was standing very close to her now, his breath hot in her face.

She took that step backwards, but found herself against the wall. "Damn it, Lucius, I didn't know!" she snapped angrily. Part of the anger, though, was directed at herself for being so scared.

"Bullshit, Hermione," he said, faint speckles of spit hitting her face. "You met with Corley before! How couldn't you know?"

"How the hell could I have known?" she demanded. "He didn't tell me. It wasn't written anywhere."

His eyes narrowed further, and a sneering smile appeared on his face. "Are you sure, my dear Hermione?"

She wasn't sure she liked the tone of his voice and instinctively shivered. "Positive," she said, injecting as much sincerity as she could in his voice.

"Or maybe you simply wanted that titbit of information to manipulate me with," he said softly, using one hand to pin her arm to the wall. "You do have a very Slytherin side, Hermione."

"Let me go!" she spat. He wasn't hurting her, the non-violence spell wouldn't have let him do that, but it was still an uncomfortable position to be in. It was more evocative of lovers than their current relationship.

"Not until you tell me why you didn't tell me," he said evenly. "Or perhaps, Hermione, perhaps you didn't want me to remember her. Perhaps you just wanted me for yourself. You wanted to fuck the big bad Death Eater."

In one motion, she pushed him away from her. He stumbled slightly. "How fucking dare you?" she spat, chest heaving. "What the hell has gotten into you, Lucius?" He opened his mouth, but she held up her hand. "I don't want to know!" She opened the door. "Let me know when you're more rational." She narrowed her eyes. "And if you cannot be rational, then perhaps a few days in Maximum Security will help, non-violence spell or not."

Hermione slammed the door behind her, not caring that Lucius was in her own room.

- 

Ron was deep in thought the entire route back to the Ministry. He had hired a Wizarding Taxi and it had picked him up from the pier on the mainland. It was now squeezing its way around and beside Muggle vehicles.

Absentmindedly, he looked around at the spacious interior of the car and noticed a cooler. Opening it, he found a bottle of Firewhiskey. He poured himself a small shot, wincing as the feeling of flames shot down his throat. There was an immediate feeling of well-being afterwards, which was what Ron wanted. He didn't particularly like Firewhiskey, but it was useful alcohol when it came to wanting to blank out one's mind. Even a small shot had incredible potency.

Through rather blurred eyes that refused to clear even when he blinked them, Ron stared at the slogans on various posters pinned around the car.

Which would YOU rather have? A little less freedom, or a LOT less city.

Minister Corley supports a change to peace and prosperity. Do YOU? 

Ron was faintly amused as he read them. The tones of the posters were accusatory, yet he knew that few would be offended. The posters were obviously designed to stir up the last vestiges of fear of the war-torn years, and to channel them into admiration for the new Minister.

Squinting, he spotted a familiar looking poster.

Report dissidents and help create a lasting peace! 

It was one of his own.

Ron's lips twisted into a bitter smile as he remembered the bewilderment of his old friends when he told them about the Ministry. He wondered what they would think if they knew that he was part of it, that part of his duties in the Department of Security was to weed out dissenters and anybody unhappy with the Ministry. But it wasn't his choice to do this. It was simply thrust on the Department of Security one day and anybody expressing surprise or horror at the requests had simply disappeared. Anybody asking after those missing also tended to vanish.

Ron was thankful that he simply didn't speak out those first few days. He wasn't sure why he didn't, but perhaps it was the tingling feeling at the back of his neck that something was wrong.

After his friends and colleagues disappeared mysteriously, everybody left learned quickly to obey orders and to smile when anybody outside the Department saw them.

Horror filled Ron the day he received the pink slip saying that Ginevra Weasley, Bill Weasley and Percy Weasley were declared traitors. He knew that Bill and Percy were held in a new Ministry prison but Ginny was in an unknown location. Briefly, he wondered how they had been caught, why they were caught and whether he could save them. A part of him, the part that seemed to be disappearing day by day, was appalled at his own behaviour. Shouldn't he be trying to save his family?

But then he simply filed the slip away with all the other pink slips and was careful not to reveal any of his inner pain to any of his colleagues. After all, they could be informers.

Being an informer was apparently a very lucrative job. Everywhere Ron looked, he could see some people with more money than they had any right to. Those people were easy to avoid. Ron was far more scared of the ones who knew how to blend in to the crowd.

He poured another shot of Firewhiskey and wondered if he really had signed his death sentence by going to see his old friends. Draining his shot, Ron decided that he didn't care.

Despite their rather paltry wages, Department of Security members still had more privileges than the ordinary citizen nowadays. It was hard to imagine that just six months ago, things were different. Not entirely different. Ron was beginning to realise just how much of the foundations for this were set up before Corley ever came into power.

The car suddenly jerked to a stop.

Ron looked outside the car and realised that he was in front of the Ministry. A wave of relief shot over him. Maybe the Ministry didn't suspect anything.

He got out of the car and walked inside the Ministry doors. He didn't notice the lack of people or noise of any kind. He didn't notice the taxi starting up again behind him and driving away.

But he did notice when behind him and all around him, the surroundings rippled like the road on a hot summer's day. When they settled down again, he saw that he was inside a grey stone building, not unlike those in Azkaban. The most frightening aspect of it wasn't the darkness, or the clouds of dust swirling around his feet, but rather, the complete silence. Ron could hear his own faint, quickened breath.

He paled.

"Welcome, Ron," a congenial voice greeted him.

Ron squinted and saw Minister Jack Corley coming out of the darkness. "Minister, where the hell am I?" he demanded. His hand reached down into his pocket and was about to pull out his wand but -

"Why, Ron, don't you know?" Corley flicked his wand and Ron's own flew out of his hand. Chains then wound themselves around Ron's ankles and wrists and he slumped to the ground. Corley shook his head. "Ron, you shouldn't have tried to be a hero."

"So I'm declared a traitor now, am I?"

A smile lit up Corley's face. "Precisely," he said with a sigh. "I'm quite disappointed in you. You had potential, Ron. You truly did. But you had to spoil it with these ridiculous Muggle notions of freedom."

"They're not ridiculous," Ron said with conviction. "You cannot succeed with this. Somebody will realise it and come to stop you."

Corley laughed a long, echoing laugh. "Perhaps that somebody would be your little Mudblood friend? But she's nicely hidden away in Azkaban, busy with ensuring that the prisoners have their rights and liberties. By the time she realises, it'll be far too late and I'll have destroyed Azkaban with her inside."

"Why are you trying to do this to us? Do you find it amusing to see our world suffer? Haven't we all suffered enough?"

Corley shook his head sadly. "You can't see it, can you? I'm not trying to make our world suffer. We're going to enter an era of peace and prosperity unheard of – undreamt of – by our ancestors. I'm helping us!"

"And what of people like me who you've thrown in prison? What of the people who you have ordered killed?"

"Some people will always reject what is best for them," Corley said calmly. "They're like children in that regard. I cannot let them hinder the progress of the rest of our world."

Ron couldn't believe the rubbish he was hearing. The thing that horrified him was that Corley seemed to believe in his own words implicitly. He truly seemed to think that he was being altruistic and doing this for the good of their world. With disgust, Ron spat on the ground, the globule of spit landing on the dust in front of the Minister's feet. .

"That was a bad choice, Ron," Corley told him, a sliver of anger lining his voice. He looked over from where Ron was lying on the ground and barked, "Guards, remove the prisoner from my sight."

Ron felt himself being levitated by somebody standing in the shadows. His body was manoeuvred, none-too-gently through long, narrow, stone corridors before it was deposited into a dirty little cell.

Corley was obviously following close behind because his face immediately appeared at the slits in the cell. "Don't entertain notions of escape," he said, with an almost whimsical smile. "Escape is impossible."

Wishing he hadn't taken that last shot of Firewhiskey, Ron narrowed his eyes. "Well I'll have to do the impossible, won't I?"

But Corley had already gone.

- 

Harry found that Hermione was rather quiet during the days she returned from the Ministry. She still attended to the entire running of Azkaban while also looking after Snape and Lucius, but she didn't seem to enjoy it like she had before. He didn't get any sense that she was glad she was helping the inmates, or that she got any pleasure out of the job at all. Instead, Hermione's pursed lips and steely glare gave the impression that she was doing a distasteful duty. He wondered whether she was burning out but whenever he asked, she simply gave an abrupt shrug and hurried off in the opposite direction of where he was going.

They had still not figured out what to do with what Ron had told them. Harry could see that Hermione was – despite assurances to the contrary – having trouble believing what their old friend had told them. Even he had to admit that a part of him had the same problem. As far as he could see from The Daily Prophet and from what Hermione had said of what London looked like, there didn't seem like any problems.

A shiver crawled down his spine as he suddenly remembered the description of a Lethifold that was in his old schoolbooks. If it's true, he thought, it's like a Lethifold in the night. Almost invisible until it is too late for the unsuspecting victim.

Harry sighed and gave himself a mental shake.

He was standing outside, playing guard to the Medium Security Prisoners who were enjoying their daily exercise outside. Hermione had decreed that all prisoners, even the Maximum Security ones, would be allowed to taste fresh air. Not that they're appreciating it much, Harry thought as he watched blue-clothed people wandering around aimlessly around the courtyard.

The bright sunlight was acting as quite an effective eraser against the smells of Azkaban and if Harry closed his eyes, he could almost imagine that he was in Hogwarts during his first year where everything – although not entirely happy – wasn't filled with the stomach-twisting events of today.

But he didn't close his eyes, not even for a brief moment. His right hand was firmly around his wand. His eyes roved the courtyard, looking for prisoners acting suspiciously. Just in case.

A tap on his shoulder made Harry jump. He looked around and saw Will standing there.

"I'll take this watch," Will said. "You look tired."

Harry gave him a grateful smile. "Thank you," he said as he headed back towards the cottage.

Getting into the sitting room, Harry threw himself down on one of the sofas and decided to take a nap. But almost immediately after he had closed his eyes, somebody stormed into the room and threw what felt and smelt like a newspaper onto his chest. "What is it?" he muttered as he opened his eyes again.

Hermione stood above him, her arms crossed and wrapped around herself. Harry looked more closely and saw that her lips were trembling and a tear quivered in the corner of her right eye. "Look at that," she said softly, indicating the newspaper.

Harry picked up the newspaper and immediately saw the large print heading saying: _Ronald Weasley, Prominent Security Department Member, Declared A Traitor. _Below it, in only marginally smaller text read: _Weasley trading Ministry information with Muggles!_

"Ron's been arrested," Hermione whispered. Her face was ashen.

Harry looked at the heading again. He felt as though a part of his brain refused to process the information. It was impossible, ridiculous that Ron could have been arrested. He had only been at Azkaban with them a few days ago. And he was so careful nowadays. How was it possible?

As if she was echoing his thoughts, Hermione said softly, "How is it possible?"

"I have no idea." Harry skimmed down the article and saw the reasons given for the arrest. "Ronald Weasley was arrested soon after his visit to Azkaban Island by Ministry officials," he read from the article. "It was discovered that Weasley was trading sensitive Ministry documents with the Muggles, materials which could affect the course of a Magi-Muggle war, should such an event happen." He was about to continue reading, when Hermione lifted her hand up.

"Wait," she said. "A _Magi-Muggle _war?" She looked to Harry for confirmation.

He nodded.

"But the Muggles know nothing of this world," she protested. As Harry watched, her lips thinned and she pursed them. "That can't be. It just can't."

Harry felt a coldness creeping down his spine. He had a feeling he knew what she was denying.

"But that's the only explanation. Occam's razor and all." She looked down for a second and when she looked up again at Harry her eyes were overly bright. "The Ministry is _trying_ to force us into another war, this time with the Muggles." Harry opened his mouth but Hermione continued, relentlessly. "That's why they're creating departments right and left. That's why they're locking up protestors. They want the entire wizarding world to _believe_ that the Muggles are a threat."

"But, but," Harry wasn't really sure what he was trying to protest, but he couldn't believe that Corley wanted to send them into another war.

It seemed that a dam was bursting inside Hermione. "And by sending us into a war, by painting Muggle mistakes and inquisitiveness as dangers, he'll consolidate his hold on the wizarding world. He'll be able to formally declare martial law. What he has right now is only a pale shadow of what he would have if we ever went to war against the Muggles."

"But," Harry said, "wouldn't we lose?"

Hermione's pale lips were set in a line. "I'm not sure he cares."

With a determined expression on her face, Hermione knocked on the Minister's door for the second time in less than a week. Without an invitation again, she thought grimly as Sampson glared at her. She was rather surprised when the Minister had agreed to see her, but she wasn't going to throw away the opportunity to ask why Ron had been imprisoned. With one rather sweaty hand, Hermione smoothed out her neat black robes.

"Come in," a rather brittle voice said from inside.

She pushed open the door, stepped through and closed it behind her. The first thing she noticed about Corley when she glanced up was that he looked incredibly tired. He seemed to have aged about five years in less than a week. The lines around his eyes were deeper and there were dark sacks under his eyes. "Minister," she said, with a brief inclination of her head.

He gave her a rather wan smile. "How may I help you, Miss Granger?"

"I'm here to see you about my friend Ron Weasley."

Corley's sharp eyes focused on her own. "Miss Granger, I'm afraid Mister Weasley has been arrested for high treason."

"I'm well aware of that," she said, an edge in her tone. "But I'm afraid you must have made a mistake. I have known Ron for most of my life, ever since our first year at Hogwarts, in fact, and he would never betray us to the Muggles."

Corley raised an eyebrow. "Is it not true that his father Arthur Weasley frequently experimented with Muggle devices and almost exposed the wizarding world to the Muggles once, which led to his incarceration in Azkaban for six months?"

"Yes, but--" Hermione started, before he interrupted her.

"Miss Granger, as much as we sometimes want to think otherwise, we do not always know people as well as we think, and hope, we do." His voice was compassionate and gentle. "I'm afraid that this is one of those cases."

"You're wrong," she said bluntly, not caring that she was speaking directly against the Minister, the man they suspected of taking over the wizarding world.

He shook his head. "I'm sure you want to think that, Miss Granger, however, I'm afraid the evidence against Mister Weasley is overwhelming."

"Then," she said, rather tartly. "May I see this evidence?" She wouldn't give him a line to feed her.

"I'm afraid that the evidence _is _classified, but I have personally examined the evidence and I find it more than satisfactory." He looked deep in her eyes and Hermione could almost imagine his eyes brimming over with honesty. "Mister Weasley, as much as I hate to tell you, is every bit as guilty as the Daily Prophet makes him out to be."

"I _know _Ron and he would never do something like that," she argued, knowing full well that this kind of personal argument was very unlikely to sway the Minister.

He gave her a rather stern look. "I know you have difficulty accepting it, but your old friend is guilty. You would do well to remember who you were talking to as well."

Hermione resisted the urge to punch him or to give him Veritaserum. She suspected that even if she did have the latter that it probably wouldn't make him tell the truth. Lies dripped off Jack Corley's tongue like honey off a beehive "Why was he not brought before the Wizengamot for a full public trial, then?" she demanded.

Corley's face seemed to close like a door. "The delicacy of the matter meant that utmost secrecy needed to be kept," he told her, his tone even but without the compassion it had a few moments ago. "Although Wizengamot candidates are screened, it was impossible to ensure complete privacy. A public hearing was certainly out of the question. But, as I said before, you have the word of the Minister that Ronald Weasley is guilty. Surely, Miss Granger, that is enough?"

She pressed her lips together. "Yes, Minister Corley, that is enough," she said quietly, through clenched teeth.

The smile had returned to his face. "No problem, Miss Granger," he told her. "You may come and visit any time you wish. After all, this is a public office and I serve the people."

Hermione choked back a snort. "Thank you."

"In fact, we have another Ministry function soon. Invitations will be sent out in the mail in a few days. Perhaps you would like to join us? My wife Narcissa remembers you from your Hogwarts years and she would love to meet you again. I believe you were in her son's year. You may not know this, but her former husband is in Azkaban."

"Oh, really," Hermione said, her voice neutral. "If I attend the function, I'll be happy to meet her again."

He smiled at her. "Splendid."

After she stood there for a few seconds, Hermione realised that it was a dismissal. She walked to the door and without so much as a word of farewell, she shut it with a sharp click behind her.

**-**

Snape observed his old friend unobtrusively as they played chess together. Lucius appeared to be as he was before, but he'd changed. There wasn't anything obviously different about the blond-haired, straight-backed, arrogant man, at least not anything that would immediately tell a stranger that he had been in Azkaban for any length of time, but to Snape, there was still something about the man that hadn't been there before. It was a quiet thoughtfulness, he decided. Lucius looked far more like a man who would consider his decisions before he made them.

A corner of Snape's mouth quirked up. Then again, he thought, a prolonged stay in Azkaban can do that to a man.

But the real mark of how much Azkaban had changed Lucius was the fact the man could deign to speak to a Mudblood. Snape still found it a strange and faintly alarming thing to see two heads, one blond and smooth and the other brown-haired and bushy, bent over a chessboard together. He wasn't sure what kind of interest his old friend had in his former student, but Snape vowed to keep an eye on it.

It was true that it could be purely an intellectual interest – after all, Hermione was very intelligent – but somehow he didn't think so. His old friend didn't take purely intellectual interests in women, especially intelligent women. Even his former wife Narcissa had been a formidable woman. Snape wasn't surprised that she had married a man with political leanings. With Lucius in Azkaban for life, their marriage ties had been severed. It was only natural that she would want somebody powerful as her current husband and to cut all ties with her former, now criminal, husband.

"Something amusing you, Severus?" Lucius inquired, jerking Snape out of his thoughts.

Snape was surprised. He hadn't realised that a slight smirk had been playing around his lips. "Oh, it's nothing," he said.

Lucius raised an eyebrow and prodded a pawn forward a space. "I keep on getting this feeling that the Corley fellow is somebody I've known before," he said slowly.

Snape shrugged. "I've never heard of him before. So he probably wasn't a Death Eater."

Lucius rolled his eyes. "That lovely tattoo adorning both our left forearms would preclude him from taking on any Ministry positions. I'd already ruled that out. The problem is I'm not sure where I've met him. Perhaps it was in Germany, or in the States. Maybe in the USSR."

"I hear the Muggles call it Russia now," Snape said absent-mindedly as he moved a knight forward.

"A name is just a name," Lucius said, slight irritation edging his tone. "Really, Severus, you can be very pedantic sometimes. Even in Hogwarts, you were like this. Always wanting to get perfect marks on your exams even when you knew that my parents would pave our way into the world."

"You mean that the Dark Lord would help us," Snape said bitterly. He could still remember the promises made to him in school. Empty, pyrrhic promises now.

Lucius shrugged. "As I mentioned, you're pedantic."

"So you've said," Snape answered dryly. "Perhaps talking about your former trips would help jog your memory."

"It would," Lucius admitted. "My memory has some curious gaps nowadays; I'm not sure if yours has the same."

Snape nodded. "Hermione says that they should heal soon."

"The USSR was a beautiful place," Lucius said as he pushed yet another chess piece forward. "You could tell the country had history." A faint smile played about his face. "But I couldn't find any castles as nice as Malfoy Manor."

"Of course not," Snape said, sarcastically. He then paused and said in a more normal tone, "You told me that you studied with Serov."

"He was a trying teacher, at best. He only had mediocre magical powers, but by some twist of fate, had access to some of the best magical Dark Arts texts in Eastern Europe." Lucius shrugged. "All the best students went to him. We had some promising people in our class." He frowned suddenly.

"What's wrong?"

"Corley," Lucius said slowly. "He was there."

"What?" Snape exclaimed. "He studied the Dark Arts under Serov?" He carefully kept the envy out of his tone.

"Except he was going under the name of Comrade Borodin then. I never did learn his first name." Lucius looked over at Snape, his eyes dark. "You do realise what this means?"

"That Corley is the next Dark Lord," Snape said flatly.

"I wouldn't go that far," Lucius said, with a calculating expression on his face.

Snape shook his head. "Lucius, you aren't thinking that, are you?"

"I'm not thinking of joining him, if that's what you're implying," Lucius said irritably. "I've had my fill of following around jumped up Mudbloods."

"Corley isn't a Mudblood, is he?"

"You're being pedantic again, Severus," Lucius pointed out. "Besides, he's married to Narcissa."

Snape fell silent.

"Exactly," Lucius said, jabbing a finger so hard at the table that some of the chess pieces scurried away. "My former wife is certainly lucky in her choices of men." He said this in the tone of voice that implied it was anything but luck.

"We need to tell this to the others."

Lucius looked surprised. "I don't see why."

"Think about it, Lucius," Snape said. "They have resources. We don't. They're free. We're prisoners."

"I suppose so," Lucius said, still sounding rather dubious of the whole idea. "Hermione is back tonight. Hopefully she will be more open to the suggestion that Corley isn't who he says he is after her meeting with him today."

Snape nodded.

As it turned out, Hermione was more open to the suggestion that Corley once was called Comrade Borodin than either of those two had even suspected.

"I'm not surprised," she said flatly when they told her.

**-**

Hermione wasn't exactly sure why she had agreed to this trip ("emergency trip" Lucius had called it and even Harry had agreed) to Knockturn Alley, of all places. She would have never imagined during her Hogwarts years that she would ever venture down that little knobbly-stoned laneway just off the end of Diagon Alley. Despite the fact Harry managed to get out of the Alley unscathed during his second year, Hermione still couldn't shake the feeling of impending doom she got whenever she looked at the dark, unlabelled alleyway. Even the shops close to Knockturn Alley seemed seedier than those in Diagon proper.

Yet, she knew that she had to be here. Where else would somebody get Polyjuice Potion at such short notice? Even she had to admit that there was a certain urgency about their situation. From what she knew of Muggle dictatorships, people in their prisons had an unnerving tendency to disappear without notice, especially from state-run prisons. She didn't want that to happen to Ron.

Her fingers tightened around the purse in her hand as she turned the corner and surreptitiously slipped into Knockturn Alley. Around her, several witches and wizards did the same. It seemed that nobody wanted to be seen to be going there.

Hermione couldn't blame them. Although Knockturn Alley wasn't the same haven for dark witches and wizards as it once was, it still had a reputation of being a dangerous place to be in. Especially for Muggle-borns, she thought grimly as she walked down the dirty cobblestones with her head held high. Lucius had told her that if she were to remain unharmed ("molested" was the word he used) then she would have to exude confidence.

So Hermione walked along and tried her best to exude confidence.

For the life of her, she wasn't sure why Will or Jean hadn't come instead but Harry didn't trust them. Harry would have come himself, but that idea was vetoed by everybody. His face was still too recognisable for this to be an anonymous mission. Even Hermione's face did have a certain degree of recognisability, but with her hair magically straightened, she looked different enough.

As she walked past the shops, one of the men lurking in the minor alleyways came out and leered at her. "Lookin' for some fun, m'lady?" he said, his voice harsh and grating on her ears.

Hermione simply looked the other way and walked past. Behind her, she heard the man give a disappointed mutter. Privately, she sighed with relief. Apparently the methods Lucius taught her worked.

She walked into the depths of Knockturn Alley. Here the shops became more and more dank and dirty. The lettering on most of them were worn and faded. Even the prostitutes and sort didn't venture down here. Only the bravest dared. Or the most stupid, she thought as she walked on grimly, suppressing a shudder at the smell that wafted from an open window. It reminded her too much of Azkaban.

Finally, she came across a tiny, dirty little shop labelled "Quality Potions for the Connoisseur". Wrinkling her nose, Hermione pushed the door open, hearing the tinkle of the bell. She suppressed a wild giggle at the thought of such a Muggle implement in this shop.

The inside of the shop wasn't much better than the outside. It smelt of decay, misuse and human sweat. Half-filled bottles lined dust-ridden shelves all around her. In front of her there was a small counter.

After about two minutes, a back door opened from behind the counter and a small, wizened old woman came out. She peered at Hermione through thick lenses, but her eyes were sharp. "How may I help you, dearie?" she asked, coughing slightly.

Hermione gave a short bow and remembered what Lucius had told her. "Madam Stanton, my name is Lucinda Lysterfield. An acquaintance of mine informed me that this would be the appropriate place to obtain a quantity of Polyjuice Potion."

The old woman cackled. "Indeed?" she croaked.

Hermione nodded sharply. "If you do not have it, then I will simply have to take my business elsewhere."

Madam Stanton held up one withered hand. "I never said I didn't have it, my dear. I was simply wondering who this acquaintance of yours is."

"I'm afraid that my acquaintance does not wish for you to know." Hermione wasn't going to get caught in the trap of using a personal pronoun.

"Then," Madam Stanton said, "how do I know that you are not a Ministry inspector come here to deprive an old woman of her only source of livelihood?" She spread her arms out.

Hermione pursed her lips. "You have my word," she said finally, the words coming out sounding grated.

"Ah, but your word is not enough, Miss Lysterfield." Madam Stanton seemed to delight in tormenting Hermione. But Hermione knew what to say.

"Do you have Polyjuice or not? It is a simple question. Much like the question of what is on your left forearm." Hermione forced a cold smile onto her face. Lucius had told her that this woman was a former Death Eater, and somehow that particular piece of blackmail material didn't quell her worries. Despite the fact she could talk to both Snape and Lucius without feeling any threat on her life, talking to this old woman was a whole different matter.

The whole demeanour of the old woman changed. She drew herself up and glared at Hermione. "Miss Lysterfield, you have some gall saying that in my store."

"I only spoke the truth," Hermione said mildly. "Now about the potion."

Muttering something under her breath, Madam Stanton reached under the counter and after fumbling, she pulled out a green bottle. Hermione uncorked it and immediately caught a whiff of what was unmistakably Polyjuice.

"I trust that this is fresh," Hermione said pointedly.

"Indeed," the old woman said, with a sly smile. "I have many customers wanting that particular potion. It will be thirty Galleons."

Hermione opened her purse and took out the correct money. "I appreciate doing business with you, Madam Stanton."

"It's my pleasure, dearie." The old woman's original manner seemed to have returned. She scooped up the coins and stuffed them somewhere in her dirty robes. "I wish you luck in your assignation."

Hermione gave a sharp nod and left the store. Once outside, she breathed a sigh of relief. That was over.

Hermione decided that she was making far too many trips to and fro from Azkaban. It may have just been her imagination but the Muggle speedboat company gave her strange looks this time when she went to borrow the boat. She looked at the man sitting beside her on the small vessel that was making its bumpy way across the narrow strait, with his messy black hair and bright green eyes, and couldn't help but suppress a shudder.

He turned to her and smiled. It was a strange smile on that face. "What's the matter, Hermione?"

"Lucius, you know perfectly well what's wrong," Hermione said, with no small amount of annoyance in her tone.

Their plan had seemed good when they'd discussed it, but having a Death Eater sitting beside her in the skin of one of her best friends was unnerving at best. But still, it was the best plan they could come up with. Corley had all but invited her back to speak to him and she intended to make full use of the opportunity. And Lucius was the best person to read Corley's true motives because he had known him back when he was Comrade Borodin. Since the real Lucius wouldn't have been allowed within a kilometre of Ministry, then this was the best they could do. A curious fact Hermione had found was that the wards on Azkaban were tuned not to the consciousness of a person but rather to the body. That was how Sirius had managed to escape in dog form.

Back in Azkaban, Harry was also taking regular doses of Polyjuice and Hermione felt a twinge of sympathy for him. He would have to spend the day confined so as to not arouse sympathy.

"You know," Lucius observed. "You seem more concerned about the fact it's me sitting here rather than with the illegality of what we are doing."

"I've played with Polyjuice before," Hermione said, without thinking.

Lucius's eyes gleamed and she shuddered again to see that expression in such familiar green eyes. Harry's eyes were usually open and friendly, but Lucius's were guarded and hooded. "We really must work on your habit of blurting out the first thing on your mind," he said smoothly.

"I don't need your help." Her voice was frosty.

"But you do," he told her. "Otherwise why would I be here? But indulge me. I'm curious why you would have meddled with a Dark potion."

She glared at him. "You know as well as I do that Polyjuice isn't fully dark. It's a grey potion."

"You aren't answering my question, Hermione."

"Back in second year," she finally admitted. "We wanted to find out whether your son was the Heir of Slytherin. Happy?"

Lucius blinked. When he spoke, his voice was strangely raspy. "Draco couldn't have been the heir."

She frowned. "Well, we know that now. It was your precious Dark Lord." Somehow she had the impression that wasn't what Lucius had meant by his words.

He looked at her steadily for a moment, the green eyes unreadable. "I'm surprised that you managed to brew it correctly."

Her eyes narrowed. "Because I'm a Mudblood?" she said pointedly.

Lucius ran a hand through the messy black hair that was blowing in the wind and frowned. "How Potter manages to deal with this, I have no idea." He shook his head. "Why must you think that every comment I make to you has some bearing on your birth? An observer would think that you had a problem with having Muggle parents."

Glaring at him, Hermione replied, "Don't be ridiculous. I have a problem with your words because every time you open your mouth you insinuate that I'm unworthy because of my parents."

"Let me disappoint you, then," he replied, giving Harry's voice a smooth edge that it never had when Harry was using it. Hermione somehow suspected that Lucius had practice in using Polyjuice. He seemed perfectly comfortable wearing Harry's skin. "I was surprised because Polyjuice is a difficult potion for many fully trained witches and wizards. It requires a lot of time, effort and finesse. One mistake and the potion's wasted."

Hermione's mouth made a little 'o' of surprise. Was he giving her a compliment?

Lucius paused. "Of course, the fact that you're a Muggle-born makes it all the more surprising. I daresay that you were the brains behind the whole operation."

She wasn't sure whether to be indignant or feel slightly complimented. Frankly, Lucius unnerved her. She had no real idea what he was thinking, even when he was being civil to her. Especially when he was being civil to her. She settled for being silent.

The rest of the boat trip passed in relative silence. It was only when the boat drew into the dock and Hermione jumped out of the boat to tie it up that Lucius spoke. "How do I get out of this thing?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Just step out." Hermione couldn't help but be amused as Lucius clambered awkwardly out of the small vessel. She suspected that he wanted to use magic, but she didn't trust him with a wand.

"Stupid Muggle thing," he muttered.

"It's the only way we can get off the island," she told him mildly.

He glared at her and then reached down to uncap his hip flask. He drank deeply, grimacing slightly.

Hermione was surprised to feel a small twinge of empathy. She could still remember clearly how awful Polyjuice tasted. But the worst part, if she recalled correctly, was the feeling of the thick sludgy slime sliding down her throat. And to cap it off, she was turned into a half-cat. At least Lucius got to remain a person. She forced a slightly amused expression onto her face. "Nice, isn't it?"

"Better than Firewhiskey," was his only reply.

She had bought both of them bus tickets into London. Usually when she came alone she Apparated there, but she wasn't sure whether Lucius could do so. In fact, she was almost positive that he couldn't. Apparation was based on magical signature and although Lucius wore Harry's body, his magical signature would still be his own.

When they were safely ensconced in the bus, Hermione turned to Lucius and said sharply, "You will never, ever, ask the bus driver again why he couldn't just 'go directly through all the traffic, it's simple!' This is a Muggle bus." And then she wondered why she had automatically assumed that she would be going anywhere else with Lucius again.

He gave a shrug.

Three hours and numerous complaints from Lucius later – apparently traffic lights weren't essential equipment for the Knight Bus to get used to either – they arrived safely inside London.

Fortunately, the bus stop was only a few blocks away from the Ministry telephone booth, a fact that Hermione was very thankful for. She didn't exactly relish the idea of explaining the Underground to Lucius and why on earth there were ticket machines and barriers. Somehow she suspected that he wouldn't get it. There wasn't any real equivalent in the wizarding world.

As Hermione stated "Hermione Granger and Harry Potter" to the Ministry witch, she couldn't help the tiny tremor in her voice. She didn't think that the witch heard it but Lucius did and he gave her an irritated look. "Thank you," she said, her voice stronger as she took their temporary day passes, which they immediately pinned on.

They took the lift up to the Executive Floor where the Minister's office was housed. As they got out, Hermione greeted the Secretary to the Minister with a warm smile. She didn't particularly like the other woman; in fact, she found Margaret Sampson cold and officious, but there was no harm in having cordial relations.

Sampson's eyes widened as she took in Hermione's companion. "Mister Potter," she gushed as she stood up and walked over to take Lucius's hand. "It is such a pleasure to meet you."

Hermione could have sworn she saw a small flicker of panic in the green eyes before Lucius smiled and shook the older woman's hand. "I am very pleased to meet you," his eyes flicked to the badge on her chest, "Margaret."

Sampson gave him a warmer smile than she had ever given Hermione. "Not as pleased as I am to meet you." She cast Hermione a look of irritation almost as if to say, 'Why haven't you introduced us before?'

Hermione pursed her lips. "I'm sorry, Miss Sampson," she said, injecting sweetness into her voice. "But I'm afraid we only have a short time in London. May we see the Minister?"

Sampson blinked at her and Hermione had the strangest impression that she had forgotten her own job. It was funny the effect Harry's face had on people. She suppressed a wild giggle at what the older woman's face would be like if she knew that this was Lucius Malfoy. "The Minister is currently taking lunch." Her eyes brightened. "Perhaps you would like to join him."

Suppressing the desire to roll her eyes at the obvious attempt to get to know Harry better (surely Sampson would find an excuse to sit down with them once they were at the Minister's table), Hermione nodded. "That would be pleasant."

From the expression on Lucius's face she knew that he knew exactly what words she would have used instead of 'pleasant', had she been alone. It was funny, Hermione mused as Sampson knocked on the Minister's door, Harry wouldn't have understood me nearly as well as Lucius. Their old schoolyard bonds had withered somewhat over the years and Harry wasn't able to know how she felt any longer. Not, a small traitorous voice inside her whispered, that he ever could read you that well. They were led into an adjoining room to the main office where Hermione blinked rapidly to see the small feast adorning the table. It looked far too much for one person. The Ministry house-elves must be overworked, she thought absently.

"Minister Corley," Sampson said with a nod. "Miss Granger and Mister Potter are here to see you. Since they said that they wouldn't be long, I thought that they might like to join you for lunch." Her eyes suddenly brightened. "Is that a smoked salmon sandwich?"

The Minister laughed. "Margaret, if you want to join us, you only need ask."

Sampson looked slightly abashed but sat down anyway. "Thank you."

Corley gestured out at the seats around the table. "Miss Granger, Mister Potter, please sit down."

Hermione sat down on the chair diagonally opposite from the Minister, and after the briefest of hesitations Lucius took the chair directly opposite.

"Back so soon, Miss Granger," Corley said conversationally but she thought she could detect a note of suspicion in his voice.

"Harry was busy last time," she explained, and wished again that she had a better reason, "and he wanted to see you." She shrugged. "Staying at Azkaban can be a bit oppressive so I thought I'd just tag along." She made her eyes wide and unblinking as she spoke and hoped that he believed her.

Fortunately, he seemed to accept the rather flimsy excuse. "It is nice to see you again. I hope you are well."

She nodded. "I am." Privately she wasn't that sure about the Minister himself though. He looked sicker than when she last saw him. She amended that thought. Corley didn't look sick, per se, but he looked terribly overworked and tired. There were large black bags hanging underneath his eyes. His skin had a grey tinge.

He gave her a rather wan smile. "I suppose you are wondering about my appearance. This job is quite demanding."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Lucius interjected, smiling at the Minister.

Hermione suppressed a shiver at the courtier-like smoothness in his tone.

Corley turned to Lucius. "Mister Potter, it is very nice to see you. I cannot express how grateful I am that you support this new Azkaban venture."

"I thought – and still think – that the Azkaban idea is a very ingenious one," Lucius said. "I was glad to give it my full support."

"You have your friend Miss Granger to thank for that."

Lucius turned to Hermione and looked into her eyes. "Thank you," he said quietly.

"You're welcome," she replied, not knowing why her throat was so tight.

Turning back to the Minister, Lucius smiled again. "I must say you look familiar. Have we met before?"

Corley frowned in thought. "I do not believe so. I was not in this country during most of your schooling and post-schooling years, and I believe you spent your pre-schooling years with Muggle relatives."

"They took me overseas a few times," Lucius said blandly and Hermione almost winced at the bald-faced lie. They had gone over Harry's life story a few times – a rather surprising tale for both Snape and Lucius – just to make sure that Lucius would make no errors. She was positive, however, that this was no error. It was simply a lie and a very good one at that. Lucius was looking directly at the Minister's eyes and he wasn't blinking. "We went on a holiday to Dresden, Germany once to see the remains of a Muggle concentration camp. Another time we went to Leningrad, USSR, now St. Petersburg, Russia. Perhaps I saw you then?"

Was it just her imagination or did Corley's face look slightly pale? Hermione took up a knife and fork and began to eat the food on the plate in front of her in an attempt to quiet her nerves. She wasn't sure what the food was, but she systematically cut it up and put it in her mouth while she watched. Sampson was sitting there too, mouth slightly open.

"Perhaps we did meet there then," Corley said, after a brief pause. He took a long drink of water before he continued. "You must have been a very young lad then. I'm surprised that you still remember."

Lucius gave a faint smile. "I rarely ever forget faces, Minister Corley." He tilted his head slightly and asked, as if he just thought of it, "What were you doing in Leningrad during that time? We had difficulty getting visas into that country. It was only because my uncle had a brother who lived there that we were able to get in."

Corley seemed to flounder before he finally said. "It was easier for witches and wizards."

Hermione decided that it was time to add her own bit. "Was it?" she asked innocuously. "I remember reading that it was very difficult, even for magical folk."

"And Hermione is always right on those kinds of things," Lucius said.

"Well," Corley snapped, "she's wrong this time." He seemed to catch himself and managed to force his lips into a grotesque parody of a grin. "It was fairly easy for me to enter Leningrad," he continued in a more casual tone of voice. "Not child's play, but fairly easy nonetheless."

Because you were a Dark wizard and you had contacts, Hermione wanted to scream but she didn't. Looking at Lucius's face, she realised that he had decided to stop asking questions about the past. She opened her mouth. "Wasn't Leningrad a haven for Dark witches and wizards back then?" she said casually. "Did you meet any, Minister Corley?"

Lucius sent her an admiring look as the Minister stiffened. "No," he finally said. "I don't believe I did. But you never know with those slippery bastards."

"No," Lucius agreed. "You never do know, do you?"

Hermione bit back a grin as she saw the baffled expression on Margaret Sampson's face. Obviously she had no idea who her boss truly was.

"Surely, Minister," Lucius said, his tone had a tinge of something Hermione couldn't recognise when it came out in Harry's voice. She suddenly realised that it was arrogance, the arrogance of somebody who had always gotten his own way. "Surely you could release Ron and place him under house arrest. If he no longer transmits any information to the Muggles – providing that he did anything of the sort in the first place – then everything is fine, is it not? The public needn't know anything."

Hermione gave Lucius a veiled glance of amazement. She would have never done or said anything like that. Briefly she wondered whether that was the way Lucius himself did business back when he had influence and maybe that was why he was so good at it.

The Minister shook his head. "The Daily Prophet would find out." Hermione could barely conceal her snort at this. "I'm sorry. I cannot do that. Not even for you Mister Potter. The public, as much as they admire and like you, would lynch you if they found out."

"But they needn't find out," Lucius said persuasively.

"I'm sorry," Corley said, his voice having a note of finality in it. "Was that all you came to see me for? I'm sorry."

"Minister," Hermione said, in one last desperate attempt, "could we at least see our friend? It wouldn't do any harm."

Corley shook his head. "Ronald Weasley may pass messages outside through you. I'm sorry, but I cannot allow that possibility to happen. You may not even know you are being a conduit."

Hermione folded her lips tightly so as to not give him a piece of her mind.

Lucius wasn't nearly as diplomatic. "Well," he said as he stood up, scraping his chair back. "Then it is entirely unnecessary for us to be here any longer. I am very sorry for taking up your time, Minister." He walked over to the door and held it open for Hermione.

She stood up hurriedly and nodded towards the Minister. "Goodbye," she said.

"Goodbye," he called after them, irritation evident in his voice.

Author notes: Thank you to dancing in rain, Polar Thestral, Raspberri13, Carrie, whogirl, alicia, A.Miller, BrennaM, Geloalto, shy-n-great, Kakuraji, and RainofMemories for their review of the previous chapter. I apologise for the day or so in delay. RL has been horribly busy. Exams and all.


	6. Chapter 6

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

**Chapter 6**

As soon as they were out of the Minister's office, Lucius took a swig of Polyjuice Potion. He made a face at the taste.

Hermione couldn't help exclaiming as she saw this. "So that was why you wanted to get out of there."

Lucius raised an eyebrow at her. "Don't tell me you actually thought that I was Potter," he said quietly.

"No," she prevaricated. "But the one hour limit had slipped my mind." Hermione could feel her cheeks turning red and was irritated at herself. As they walked out of the Ministry and onto the streets of London, Hermione couldn't help but observe the man walking next to her. "You know," she observed, "you actually are a pretty good Harry. You even walk like him."

"I'm observant," Lucius told her, as they walked past numerous clothes shops. "But acting Potter isn't that hard. He's a simple being."

She glared at him. "Couldn't you just say a few sentences without trying to be insulting?"

"Apparently not," he said mildly.

They walked along in relative silence for the next few minutes when the quiet was broken by a rather loud shriek in the distance. Hermione looked up and saw a short, blonde-haired woman hurrying towards them. She frowned. Somehow that seemed to remind her of something Harry once said in one of her letters. She wished that she had read them more carefully. And then suddenly she remembered. "Shit," she muttered.

"What's the matter?" Lucius said, concerned. "And who is that woman?"

"One of Harry's former girlfriends. According to him, she didn't take the break-up well," she whispered as the woman came closer. "She's been following him around a lot, I think. Her name's Jessica, I think."

The woman stopped in front of them and shot Hermione a hostile look. "Who is this woman, Harry?"

"One of my old school friends, Hermione," Lucius said, seeming for all concerned like Harry Potter. "Hermione, this is my ex-girlfriend, Jessica."

Jessica's demeanour changed immediately. She smiled warmly at Hermione. "Good to meet you, Hermione. Harry's told me a lot about you. You guys had some escapades at school!" She shot Harry a speculative look. "You should come over more often!"

"I'm afraid I'm rather busy right now. I'm working at Azkaban Island," Lucius explained.

Jessica wrinkled her nose. "That must be awful." She laid a hand on his arm and began to slide it up.

Lucius took a step backwards and she narrowed her eyes at him. "What's the matter, Harry? Aren't I good enough for you anymore? Were you just playing with me? Thinking that you could get all the girls you wanted."

"No, of course not!" Lucius exclaimed.

"Then you will come over to my new apartment today," Jessica said eagerly. "Hermione, you don't mind, do you?"

Hermione was about to shrug when she caught sight of the trapped expression on Lucius's face. She would never know what made her do what she did next, but at the time it seemed like the right, the only, thing to do. Hermione took a step forward and looked Jessica in the eye. "Actually, Jessica, I'm afraid that I do mind. You see, Harry is my _boyfriend." _

If she had just stopped there, then Hermione would have felt pleased with her fast thinking. But she continued.

She had no idea what possessed her to pull Lucius around and press her lips against his. It was a rather quick kiss, but she couldn't help but feel a small tingle of electricity where their lips touched. As she drew back, Hermione resisted the urge to touch her lips. Lucius's eyes were surprised, but strangely grateful.

Jessica, however, was furious. "You little slut," she spat, pushed past Hermione and stalked off.

There was a long silence and then Hermione began walking again, just as an attempt to ignore the tension. They were close to the bus stop anyway and the bus was coming in less than half an hour.

"That was surprising," Lucius said, his words sounding measured and careful.

"You don't have enough Polyjuice," Hermione said quickly. "I couldn't have let you go to her apartment. You would have gotten caught." There, she thought, that was a good excuse.

He raised an eyebrow and she could almost hear his silent, well why did you kiss me then? That wasn't necessary.

"I'm sorry," she added.

"The apology isn't necessary," he said, sounding strange. "As you said, it was necessary. Essential, even."

Hermione couldn't help but feel strangely disappointed by those words.

**-**

Harry frowned. The four of them – Hermione, Snape, Malfoy and himself – were sitting around the supper table, discussing the Minister's reaction to their visit that afternoon. Everything seemed normal on the outside. Snape was sitting there, his face impassive, looking bored, until you looked into his eyes and saw that he was thinking very hard. Malfoy was sitting opposite Harry and he was currently sipping his tea. Hermione, to the left of Harry, was talking animatedly. However, he had the feeling that something was different.

He tuned back to what she was saying. "He denied our veiled accusations, of course," she said, "but his denials weren't particularly believable. He seems even worse than he did when I last saw him. If I didn't know better, I'd say that he was having trouble with the public or something, but that's patently ridiculous." She sighed. "I'm just not sure what to do with this information. It isn't as though we can go to the Wizengamot."

Harry opened his mouth hesitantly. "Perhaps," he started. "Perhaps we could go to a foreign Ministry?"

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Potter, surely even you must know how preposterous that suggestion is?"

Actually, Harry had no idea, but he didn't want to admit it.

"We've had some bad precedents when British wizards have gone to foreign Ministries," Hermione said quietly. "Harry, haven't you ever wondered why we have the Triwizard competition? There is a reason why we need to promote inter-Ministry co-operation."

Harry was confused. "But everything seemed fine at the World Cup," he said, referring to the Quidditch World Cup.

"Diplomacy, Harry," Hermione explained. "Wizards are worse in Muggles in that respect. If we go to a foreign Ministry, the best we can expect is to relinquish our freedom and become a dependant of that Ministry so that they can fight our Ministry for us. There was a Scottish Ministry in the past. It was absorbed into the British Ministry when it asked for help during an internal struggle."

"What Hermione is trying to say in her own long-winded way," Lucius cut in dryly, "is that going to a foreign Ministry is our last resort."

Harry couldn't help noticing how Hermione flinched slightly when he said her name. A tiny frown creased his forehead. She was unusually jumpy this evening and certainly not up to her usual (and very strange, according to Harry) banter with Lucius. He wondered if anything went wrong today in London. Perhaps they had a fight? He couldn't help but suppress a gleeful feeling. Despite what Hermione had said, he still felt that Lucius was simply using them and then would discard them when the time was right. Or when he found a Dark Lord to grovel under, he thought. To hide his thoughts, Harry picked up a scone and began to spread jam and clotted cream on it.

"That's what I mean," Hermione said, in a voice that seemed to Harry to be somewhat tight.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked, concerned. "You seem a little different this evening." He looked at her and saw a faint redness spread across her cheeks.

"I'm fine," she said abruptly and picked up a scone of her own. She busied herself with spreading butter on it.

"Does anybody else have any bright ideas?" Snape said, his voice dry.

Harry glared at him. "I don't see you coming up with any."

Snape's eyes glittered. "I didn't think my suggestions were of any use."

"Of course they are!" Hermione burst out. "Any suggestions are useful. Frankly, Corley is beginning to scare me. Do you really think that he's the new Dark Lord? It seems… unlikely."

"Hermione," Snape said, an edge of irritation in his tone. "I had imagined you more intelligent than that. Or perhaps you thought all Dark Lords had papery skin and red eyes? Tom Riddle was very… handsome once."

Harry shuddered. "He looked like me."

Snape looked amused. "Getting conceited, Potter?"

Harry glared at him. "I was just pointing out a fact."

"I suggest we assassinate the Minister," Lucius suggested calmly. He picked up his cup of tea and took a sip like he hadn't just suggested something that even ten years ago would have gotten them arrested for high treason.

Almost immediately, Harry felt everybody stop moving. Even Snape stared at Lucius.

"You can't be serious," Hermione choked out. "Isn't that rather … drastic?"

Lucius looked at her steadily. "Do you have a better plan?"

"But Lucius," Snape said, "would you have our world flounder without a leader after you assassinate the Minister?"

"Certainly not," Lucius said, sounded indignant. He smiled briefly, a smile that sent shivers crawling up Harry's back like a thousand flobberworms, and looked at Harry. "I believe we have a very good Ministerial candidate here."

"You're joking, Lucius, surely," Snape said.

"Would I joke about something like that, my old friend?"

Snape looked uncertain. "I suppose not."

"But," Harry burst out, determined to find something wrong with this new and patently stupid plan, "you're not even on our side! You're only here because you know something about who Corley used to be and because of your own admission that you don't want to go crawling after him and kissing his robe hems. You probably only want to put me as Minister so that you can kill me in turn and somehow become Minister yourself." He paused. "Besides, I don't even want to be Minster!"

"Why, Mister Potter," Lucius said, "you have so little trust in me."

"That would be because you have never particularly been worthy of trust," Harry ground out.

Lucius inclined his head. "That may be true," he said quietly. A small smile curled the corner of his mouth. "But is not the side of the Light all about giving people second chances? Surely if you could give my friend Severus a second chance, you could give me one. Besides, I assure you, on the Corley matter, I am entirely on your side."

"But you aren't necessarily on other matters," Hermione pointed out.

"Hermione, sometimes you just have to trust people," he told her.

"People, yes. Lucius Malfoy, no," she said simply. "You haven't given us any concrete proof that you're on our side. I'm sorry, but I'm no Albus Dumbledore. You're here because you have information. It has nothing to do with trust."

Lucius quirked an eyebrow, looking for all the world like Snape for a second. "I suppose I should be hurt by that rejection." Somehow Harry felt that something else was passing between those two other than the obvious. "Well then, what would you propose?"

"That we re-publish and distribute The Quibbler. To tell people what is happening," she said immediately. "If people know what is happening, what Corley is doing with these new laws of his, then they'll uprise and he will have to step down."

Harry had to admit that her plan had some merit. "I like it," he said tentatively. "I'm not sure I could plan an assassination. That would be sinking down to their level."

"Ah," Lucius said. "_Their_ level. There always is a _they_, isn't there?"

Harry frowned; he wasn't sure what the other man was talking about and by the expression on Hermione's face, neither did she. Snape, however, he wasn't quite sure of. Those dark eyes seemed to show a surprising amount of understanding and agreement with what Lucius just said. Maybe it's an ex-Death Eater thing, he thought.

"The problem with that plan," Snape said, "is that it relies on too many variables. Firstly, we must be able to get all this information out to the public. Secondly, they must believe us. Thirdly, they must be willing to do something about it and believe me," he gave a wry smile, "from somebody who has worked for a Dark Lord, people usually aren't willing to do anything. Fourthly, Corley might come and put us all in jail before that." He shrugged. "I'm not saying that assassinating the Minister is the best option, but it only relies on us."

"It's nice to see that my old friend is supporting me on this one," Lucius commented.

"But I could never plan to kill somebody in cold blood," Hermione said adamantly.

Snape looked at her. "What did you think all those Order meetings were about? Did you think we planned raids on known Death Eater haunts to pop in and say hello?"

She looked flustered. "That's different!"

"Yes, the risks are higher this time," Snape said quietly.

Harry shook his head. "Assassinating the Minister. It just feels too much like terrorism to me."

"Or fighting for freedom," Hermione said slowly. "It all depends on how you look at it." She turned a bit red as Harry looked at her. "It's all semantics."

"Semantics or no," Lucius said coldly. "It's the only viable way unless you think you can truly get away with handing out leaflets. That way simply doesn't work."

She glared at him. "It managed to get me in charge of Azkaban."

"And why do you think that happened?" Lucius said through gritted teeth. "I suspect it's more because the Minister wanted to get you out of the way. You were a popular war hero. Having people like you stamping around muttering about liberty isn't very useful if you want to create a totalitarian government. You and Harry were easily disposed of by putting you in charge of Azkaban. Weasley had to be dealt with another way."

Hermione paled. "I'd never thought of it that way." She looked thoughtful.

Harry let out a slow breath. "Maybe we should sleep on this," he suggested. "We'll have clearer minds in the morning."

Hermione nodded and half stood up before she sat down again. "Oh, Harry," she said, "I forgot to tell you something. We bumped into Jessica today."

Immediately Harry could feel himself paling.

"And who might Jessica be?" Snape asked, looking mildly curious.

"One of Potter's ex-girlfriends. She tried to attack me," Lucius said.

"I'm... sorry," Harry said. "I thought she would have found somebody else by now. She was another reason why I came here. She would drop by my old apartment and slide notes under the door. She hasn't owled me here only because I've told Hedwig not to deliver any of her letters."

"No harm done," Lucius said.

Harry frowned. Normally Lucius's voice was inscrutable but he seemed to be hiding something. "Did something else happen?" he asked. "Jessica… she's rather unstable." He shook his head. That was the understatement of the century. She was one of the worst mistakes he had ever made. Her mental stability was on the same level of Bellatrix _after _she had come out of Azkaban for the first time.

"No, nothing," Hermione said quickly. "She left quickly."

Somehow, Harry couldn't believe this. Jessica was usually like a burr. She would stick on. There needed to be a really good reason for her to leave quickly. He frowned. "This is a bit of a coincidence. She," he hesitated, "was probably looking for me. How did you manage to get rid of her?"

"That was Hermione's doing," Lucius said.

Harry looked at his friend in surprise. "How did you do it, Hermione? The last time I bumped into her, I actually grabbed a random witch and kissed her to pretend that she was my girlfriend." He shook his head. "Boy, that witch was surprised. But I'm sure nothing like that happened this time." He looked at Hermione, who had turned a surprising shade of red.

"Of course not," she said quickly, but she turned redder. Her eyes flickered to Lucius and then back to the table in front of her.

Harry's mouth dropped open. "It did happen?" he spluttered. "You kissed him?"

Hermione refused to answer but simply picked up her own cup of tea and took a resolute sip.

"How could you? Kiss Lucius Malfoy?" Harry looked at his friend but she wouldn't look up. Lucius was sitting there with a look of faint amusement on his face. He looked over at Snape and was surprised to see an impassive expression.

She let out a long breath. "Fine, Harry," she snapped. "I kissed Lucius. Are you happy? Besides, it got rid of Jessica." She pushed her chair back with a scrape and stood up. "Now if you'll excuse me, I think I will retire." Hermione left without a backwards glance.

After a minute or so of silence, Lucius also stood up. "If that is all, I might leave as well."

Harry was left sitting at the table alone with Snape.

**-**

Harry looked over at the other man, expecting to see the same impassive expression he had been wearing for most of the discussion, but saw Snape's lips twitching. Suddenly, Snape began laughing, a deep rich laugh that was… Harry tried not to think about it. It was almost like dark chocolate.

"That's a thought," Snape finally said when he had finished laughing. "Hermione and Lucius. Together."

Harry glared at him. "I don't think it's at all funny."

Snape shrugged. "You have to admit that they aren't that badly matched. Both are intelligent and determined to succeed."

"But Malfoy hates Muggle-borns," Harry pointed out. "Besides, they define success in different ways."

"I'm not sure my old friend hates Muggle-borns as much as you think," Snape said speculatively. "After all, he always knew that the Dark Lord was half-blood. He respects power and you friend certainly has a lot of it." Harry's face must have shown some of his horror, because Snape sighed. "He isn't going to go after you, Harry. You aren't his type. And even if anything did happen between those two, it's unlikely to last."

"That's good," Harry said adamantly.

Snape stared at him until Harry felt like he had something on his face. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Surely you aren't against the possibility because of the age difference," Snape said slowly.

Harry frowned and thought about it. The age difference between Hermione and Malfoy certainly was a lot. Even more than Harry and Snape. Harry blinked. Where had that thought come from? "Not really," he said. "But I still can't believe she did it."

"Lucius didn't seem that upset about it."

Harry stared. "You can't honestly think…"

Snape shrugged. "Who knows?"

**-**

Hermione felt the atmosphere was rather on edge the following morning.

"Did everybody sleep well?" she asked, attempting to make small talk as she spread marmalade over her toast.

"Like a baby," Will said with a grin.

Jean simply shrugged as did Lucius.

"I'm sorry your friend is a traitor," Jean said, sympathetically and Hermione could feel her hands clenching underneath the table. She knew that the other woman meant well by her words, but did she have to be so infuriating?

"Thank you for your concern," she said tightly, still looking over at Harry, who seemed to be examining his teacup with surprising intensity.

Before she could ask him what was wrong, a large black owl swooped in through their open kitchen window. Hermione blinked. It wasn't time for their usual Daily Prophet delivery and that newspaper had, surprisingly, gotten more punctual with Corley in charge. She took the paper from the owl's talons and absently handed it a Galleon she always kept on the breakfast table. She took one look at the headline – huge headline blazing the information out for the wizarding world to see – and paled.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked, sounding concerned.

Hermione dropped the newspaper onto the table and that was when everybody saw the massive lettering at the top: **MINISTER FOR MAGIC JACK CORLEY ASSASSINATED LAST NIGHT. **

In slightly smaller letters underneath were the words: _Muggles Suspected!_

"I don't believe it," Hermione said, feeling faint. Only last night they had been planning the assassination of the Minister and now somebody had actually done it. But who, she wondered. Who would do that?

"Are you sure it isn't some sort of sick joke?" Jean demanded, grabbing the Daily Prophet from the table. She pressed her thumb on the upper right corner of the paper and lifted it up again. Slowly the newspaper insignia appeared.

"Apparently not," Snape said dryly.

Jean glared at him and then turned her glare at Lucius. "Doubtless," she said frostily, "your kind had something to do with it." She pushed back her chair with a scrape and stood up. "I'm going to my room."

She was about to leave when Will called, "Leave the paper behind, we want to read it."

Jean whirled around and threw the paper onto the table, upsetting orange juice onto a corner of the paper. Hermione immediately grabbed a towel and dabbed at it. The short blonde woman then flounced from the room. Probably to owl friends or relatives, Hermione thought.

"It certainly is surprising," Lucius said calmly.

With a frown, Will turned on the older man. "You don't sound very upset about it."

Lucius shrugged. "I don't see any tears from anybody else on this table."

"Well, that can hardly be that shocking," Will said tightly. "Corley did imprison one of Harry and Hermione's oldest friends. Whether it was rightful or not doesn't matter. Their feelings against him couldn't exactly be that friendly."

"And yourself?"

Will faltered for just a moment too long before saying, "I think it is a tragedy."

Lucius gave a faint smile. "And I noticed how you paused before saying it."

"You're an observant bastard, aren't you?" Will said with a shake of his head. "I admit it, I have no great love for the Minister. Some of his policies… they just don't feel right. But assassination? Somebody took a really drastic route."

"That's for certain," Hermione muttered as she picked up the newspaper again. She read the leading article aloud for everybody at the table. "_In a shocking turn of events, last night popular Minister for Magic Jack Corley was murdered while he slept. His wife Narcissa is reported to be distraught. Evidence shows that the assassin crept in while the couple were sleeping and cast a sleeping charm on Narcissa while turning and then casting Avada Kedavra on the sleeping Minister. Guards were alerted to this turn of events when the newly widowed Mrs. Corley ran out of their bedroom screaming in the morning. _

"_The Ministry of Security_, _in conjunction with the Auror Department_, _is conducting the investigation into the assassination. They will be tracing the assailant's wand and magical signature, but it is possible that an untraceable wand was used. _

"_Meanwhile_, _martial law is declared for wizarding Britain. Any person found outside their premises of residence without a permit after 6pm will be sent to Azkaban or the newly established high-security prison in London. It is asked that members of the public co-operate with officials and martial law will be lifted as soon as deemed safe. _

"_An official day of mourning is scheduled for sometime next week." _

Hermione looked up from the article and met three pairs of horrified eyes. "Martial law?" she whispered.

"But that's ridiculous," Snape snapped. "The death of a Minister should be no cause for that sort of knee-jerk reaction."

"Apparently somebody at the Ministry feels that it's worthwhile," Hermione muttered.

"Maybe it is?" Will suggested. She turned to glare at him and he shrugged. "It sounds drastic but if it will stop riots…"

There was silence.

"Does nobody else see what wasn't mentioned in the article?" Lucius commented, almost casually. Hermione frowned. "I wonder who's in charge of the Ministry now?" he continued.

She paled and began to flip pages. There was a biography of Jack Corley's life on pages 2-3, an interview with Narcissa Corley on pages 4-5, and finally, she found it, tucked away in page 10 after the 'other news'. "_In a surprise move, Corley named his wife as second-in-command in the Ministry only a few days before his tragic demise. Current control of the Ministry lies in the hands of Narcissa Corley." _

"That," Harry began and then stopped, "that isn't right! Shouldn't there be an Assistant Minister or something?"

"My ex-wife was very devious," Lucius said. "She always expressed a desire to be in control." Surprisingly, his face suddenly paled. "I wouldn't be surprised if she were the brains behind this whole operation," he said quietly. "She never had much loyalty to anybody. As soon as she saw that victory for the Dark Lord was unlikely, she switched sides. I doubt she gave her new allegiances any greater loyalty."

"But," Harry protested. "She didn't seem like that."

Lucius turned to him. "Surely you didn't buy her vapid act?" He shook his head. "The Black sisters were abnormally bright. Even a prolonged stay in Azkaban didn't affect Bella's intelligence, though her sanity was much affected. I think Andromeda was the only one not power-hungry out of the three. I know for certain the other two sisters were, although Bella and Narcissa went about it in different ways."

"How can the Ministry accept this?" Hermione fumed. "Even if it is the law, it's still ridiculous passing on the reins of government from husband to wife."

"You forget," Snape told her, "that Corley effectively had the entire Ministry in his pocket. He could have passed anything. And doubtless," he sneered, "the bunch of fools thought that it was a foolish gesture of love. But his ruling does stand."

"It may well have been a foolish gesture of love, but misguided," Lucius said. "Narcissa's speciality when she studied the Dark Arts was the Killing Curse. She could cast it wandless, which would be untraceable. I wouldn't be surprised if she slept beside a corpse the entire night."

Hermione shuddered. "That's ghoulish."

"Possibly," Lucius shrugged, "but out of you all, surely I know her best?"

Even Will had to agree with that statement, even though he didn't like it much. With a sigh, he stood up. "I have to go and supervise the prisoners now. I'll see you guys later." He shook his head slowly. "I still can't believe any of this is true."

"Neither can anyone else, by the looks of it," Hermione called after his departing figure. Once he was out of earshot, she looked at the others. "What now?" she asked softly. "All our plans seem to be in vain."

"I suppose," Harry suggested hesitantly, "you could go up to London again and ask whether she would pardon Ron. Perhaps she would be more lenient than her late husband."

Lucius simply stared at him. "That is the most supremely ridiculous idea I have ever heard of," he said with a sneer. "We've already established that in all probability Narcissa murdered Jack Corley. What makes you think she did that out of kindness for the wizarding world? I can tell you that she simply doesn't think that way."

Hermione closed her eyes briefly. "If that's true then she'll be worse."

"Precisely," Lucius ground out. He gave a rather nasty smile. "Perhaps she will do what Corley never dared and make Mud- Muggle-borns second-class citizens."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "How dare you," she spat out, furious all of a sudden. She had no clue what possessed her to kiss him the previous day but it had obviously not been because of any internal change of morals. He was still the same arrogant, xenophobic bastard he had always been. The rational part of her mind pointed out that he was just thinking of possibilities, and not necessarily advocating them but Hermione still was fuming. The expression on his face made her think that he wouldn't be adverse to any plans of Narcissa's.

"I don't think we want to wait to see what laws she wants to pass," Harry said, sudden decisiveness in his tone. Hermione noticed a brief look exchanged between him and Snape and wondered what it was about. "But," he paused and bit his bottom lip, "I don't want to end up being a subversive group that is hated by the general public. If we're going to act, it'd better be soon and with evidence that she is ruining our world."

"Of course, that will simply just be lying around," Lucius said sarcastically.

"Actually," Snape broke in, sounding thoughtful. "We may be able to manufacture it."

They all turned to stare at him. Hermione frowned, not liking the rather amused glint in his eyes. "What?" she asked.

"Well," he said slowly, "I think it's accepted that Narcissa Corley doesn't hold a lot of affection for Lucius here. What we need is to create a situation where one of us becomes the confidant of Narcissa. I think that Lucius, and by association, myself are automatically excluded. The best candidate would be you, Hermione."

She blinked. "Me? How?"

Snape smiled briefly. "You weren't known for liking Lucius much back in school and the days after the war. In fact, I believe you testified strongly at his trial. If you tell her that Lucius tried something on you, I'm sure that she would believe you and trust you as a fellow hater of my friend here."

Hermione stared at him and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lucius staring as well. "But I'm Muggle-born," she pointed out when she finally could speak.

Snape shrugged. "Immaterial. Her hatred of Lucius is far stronger than her dislike of Muggle-borns."

"How do you know that?" Hermione demanded.

"Actually," Lucius said. "That is likely to be true. She denounced me very strongly at my trial. Plus, she has shown capability to work with and around Muggle-borns. In fact, I'm not sure she is prejudiced against them so much as simply wanting somebody beneath her. Muggles, however, are a whole new question." He wrinkled his nose and stared at Snape. "I don't think much of your plan, though."

"She will believe it, however, don't you agree?" Snape said.

Lucius sighed. "In all probability, yes."

Hermione stared at both of them. "Let me get this straight," she began. "I'm supposed to go up to her, tell her that you've been… what… raping me? And that she's supposed to suddenly believe me and decide that I'm her best friend."

Lucius smiled faintly. "That's Severus's general idea, yes."

"I think it's ridiculous," Harry said flatly. "She'll never believe it."

"You'd be surprised what some people can believe when it coincides with their personal beliefs," Snape told them. "Besides, you're not going to become her best friend. You're simply going to get her to trust you enough to snoop around and find evidence. It's simple enough."

She wrinkled her nose. "But couldn't we come up with a better story?" she asked.

"Can you think of a better one?" Snape demanded. "This satisfies her belief that Lucius is nothing but a vicious brute who is willing to couple with a Muggle-born, no offence meant."

Hermione spluttered, but couldn't think of an appropriate comeback. "But," she tried again, "shouldn't I be traumatised?"

He stared at her. "Surely you can pretend," he snapped. "It's called acting, Miss Granger. It is not beyond your intellect. Unless you want this to be as realistic as possible and in that case, I'm sure Lucius will be more than willing to oblige."

"Severus!" the exclamation came from Harry, who was glaring at the older man. "That's… disgusting."

There was a pause. "I'm sorry," Snape said stiffly. "I didn't mean any offence. I just mean for us to take this opportunity before anything else happens."

Hermione studied her hands, which were rather dry and chapped by the constant salty wind. She sighed. "I'll do it," she said quietly.

Author notes: Sorry about the lack of individual replies. RL has been hell lately. But I really appreciate each and every review. Thank you to Riley Black, Dragonmaster Kurai, Raspberri13, Nymphe, A. Miller, The Mad Madame, aicila, BrennaM, whogirl,and Kakuraji for their reviews of Chapter 5.

Reviews make me happy. ;) hint


	7. Chapter 7

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

**Chapter 7**

Going through London while martial law was in force was a very different experience, Hermione decided. Even the atmosphere in the Muggle areas somehow felt different. Everybody seemed to be on edge. Impulsively, she had phoned her parents and asked how they were doing. Apparently Muggle London was also on some sort of orange alert due to the possibility of a terrorist attack. Doubtless, she thought dryly, the work of Magi-Muggle relations.

The feeling in Diagon Alley, where she stopped for lunch, was worse. Nobody seemed to keep eye contact with each other long. Mothers grasped the hands of their children tightly, as if afraid to let them go. Even young children seemed less playful today. It was a far cry from the happy atmosphere just a week ago.

She entered the Leaky Cauldron and found the pub to be almost deserted. She wished that she could have a stiff drink but decided against it. Meeting Narcissa Corley while inebriated, even slightly, wouldn't be a good idea.

"Tom," she greeted the bartender.

He sighed as he wiped the table in front of her. "Horrible news, isn't it?"

"Mmmhmm," she said neutrally.

"How's things at Azkaban Isle, making changes?"

She smiled. "Yes," she said. "It is going very well." And indeed it was. It was simply other parts of her life, and the life of the wizarding world that were falling apart.

"And what would you like today?"

After a moment of thought, Hermione ordered a sandwich and a butterbeer. But even that sweet drink didn't seem as nice today. She made a face.

"Everything does seem sour, doesn't it?" Tom said, correctly interpreting her face. "Corley was a good man. He'll be hard to replace."

"I hear that his wife is the new Minister," Hermione said carefully. She trusted Tom. It was simply the other patrons of the Leaky Cauldron – few as they were – that she didn't trust. "What do you think of that?"

He frowned. "I hadn't heard of that, but I'm sure that Corley had his reasons."

Hermione nodded. She was sure of that, too. Biting into her roast beef and vegetable sandwich, she lapsed into thought. How on earth am I going to convince Narcissa, she thought helplessly.

"You look worried," Tom commented as he came back ten minutes later to collect her empty plate.

She came back down to earth with a start. "Oh," she said vaguely. "Just this and that. I'm just wondering what will happen now." She took a few galleons out of her purse and pushed them towards the bartender. "Thanks for the meal."

He smiled at her, a half-toothless smile. "Don't worry, lassie, everything will turn out to be all right."

Oh, I'm sure they will be, she thought as she pushed open the door and went outside into the bright sunlight. But I'll have to make them so.

At Ministry Headquarters, she took out a note from Narcissa's personal secretary that allowed her access to the Ministry. Hermione had made an appointment to see Narcissa about three days ago and had just heard that morning that she had been slotted in today. The security guard at the entrance gave her a suspicious glance. "I'm afraid," he consulted her note, "Miss Granger, that you will have to relinquish your wand here. We cannot afford to take any chances. You will get it back when you leave."

"I thought separating a witch or wizard from their wand was supposed to be illegal," she commented.

The guard simply stared at her in the eye. "Forced separation is, ma'am," he told her. "You have a choice, you may either leave or relinquish your wand."

Biting her tongue, Hermione handed in the long switch of willow that had been her steadfast companion during her years in the wizarding world. She strongly objected to this latest policy but suspected that if she protested, she wouldn't be allowed in at all.

The guard took her wand and slipped a label on it. He gave her a piece of paper in return and said, "Hand this in when you leave and you'll get your wand back."

She took the piece of paper, folded it and carefully put it into an inner pocket of her robes. Somehow Hermione didn't put it past the Ministry to accidentally lose her wand. "Thank you," she said, always polite.

As she was about to go, the guard called again. "Miss Granger?"

She turned around. "Yes?"

"Please pin this onto your robes."

She walked over and he handed her a badge with the words 'Authorised Visitor' in large, flashing, block letters. With a sigh, she pinned it on.

Walking through the front doors of the Ministry, Hermione was struck at how utterly different everything looked to only a few days before. Everywhere she looked, people were scurrying around, busy, all with eyes cast downwards. Every now and again, there was an Auror stationed and each of them gave her badge an intense scrutiny. Suddenly, she realised that even Ministry employees had badges pinned on them saying so. Hell, she thought, even the Aurors have badges.

As Hermione stepped out of the elevator on the now familiar Minister's floor, she was stopped by an Auror. She raised an eyebrow when she saw his hand hovering around his wand holster.

"Please stand still," he ordered her and waved something in front of her.

Hermione squinted at it. It looked somewhat familiar. Suddenly she realised what it was. "Is that a Muggle metal detector?" she asked.

The Auror looked at her suspiciously. "And how would you know something like that?"

"I'm Muggle-born," she explained, trying not to grit her teeth as she said it. "When I go on holidays with my parents we have to walk through larger versions of those at airports." She could tell by his expression that he had no idea what she was babbling about. "Why do you need them?"

He stared at her coldly. "We take all precautions. The next assassin may well use Muggle _guns_."

From the way he said the word, Hermione suspected that he didn't know what guns were. Probably has only seen a blurry picture of them, she thought, with some amusement. It would be a strange wizard to be carrying a gun.

"You're clear," he told her as he finished running the portable metal detector over her person. "Go in and tell the secretary that you're here."

As she walked through into the main rooms, she noticed that Margaret Sampson was no longer there. Instead in her place was a rather handsome young man who looked rather familiar. She wracked her brains and finally managed to come up with a name for him. "Blaise Zabini, right?" she said as she walked up to the desk. She could remember that he was one of the few purely Slytherin families who had opted to fight for their side in the Voldemort wars.

He looked at her through rather cold eyes. "And you are?" he asked as he consulted a list sitting beside him.

"Hermione Granger," she said as she extended a hand. "I remember we went to Hogwarts together."

A light dawned in his eyes, but they didn't seem to get any warmer. "Gryffindor Head Girl. I remember you. Do you have an appointment?"

She nodded and produced the slip of parchment she had been sent by owl. "Here," she said as she handed it to Blaise.

He scrutinised it for a second. "You may go through," he finally said.

Hermione let out a silent sigh as she turned away from him. It seemed that they would be on no friendlier terms outside Hogwarts than they were in. Although the Zabinis had fought for their side, it was done with apparent reluctance. She suspected that they might have fought for Voldemort if he had been more… sane. Although, she reflected, it was a good thing that he wasn't. Otherwise, many families wouldn't have so readily taken their side.

She gave a rather tentative knock on the door. Privately, Hermione was shaking her head, not knowing how she was going to go through with this. Publicly, however, she strived to keep a calm demeanour. Relatively calm, she told herself. You were raped.

"Come in," a woman's voice called from inside.

Hermione's first impression of the older woman as she shut the door behind her was that she looked far better than her husband did when Hermione had last seen him. "I'm glad you could make the time to see me," she said quietly.

Narcissa gave her a warm smile. "It was no trouble, Miss Granger. May I call you Hermione?"

Hermione nodded mutely.

"My late husband said that you were an amazing young lady and I wanted to meet you," Narcissa said.

Hermione could feel herself thawing towards the woman and gave herself a hard mental kick. Narcissa's good, she thought with a tinge of admiration. If she hadn't been already on edge, Hermione thought she might have been taken in by the woman's friendliness. Better than her late husband anyway, she thought cynically. "Thank you, Mrs. Corley," she said.

"Please," Narcissa said with a trembling lip, "please call me Narcissa. Mrs. Corley," she sighed, "it reminds me too much of Jack."

Guilty conscience? Hermione thought spitefully as she forced herself to remember what she came for. Nevertheless, she smiled sympathetically. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Narcissa."

Narcissa gave a faint smile and pushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes. "I am, too." She took a visible breath and seemed to straighten herself up. "Now, what made you come to see me today?"

Hermione made her thoughts turn inwards. When she had been going over this the past few days with Lucius (a rather uncomfortable situation), she had gone through all different ways of telling this particular lie. Finally, they had settled on embarrassment. If she could show visible embarrassment on her face, perhaps with fidgeting and looking aside, then it would look realistic. This was despite it going against everything Hermione had ever read about lying. "Forget it all," Lucius had ordered. "Try to make it realistic. Pretend it actually happened."

She bit her lower lip.

"Is there something the matter?" Narcissa said, sounding concerned. Her bright blue eyes practically radiated sympathy.

"I don't really know why I'm here," Hermione finally said, her fingers twisting her robe. "I just…" she took a deep breath. "Need somebody to talk to and I thought you would understand." While she was talking, she had made her eyes as wide as possible so that now they were filling up with tears. Hermione looked up and blinked. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

Narcissa immediately fished a handkerchief out of robes and handed it to Hermione, who wiped her eyes with it. "This is a public office," she said. "It's my job to try and help you." She hesitated. "Do you want a cup of tea?"

It was funny, Hermione thought, how similar Narcissa's statement was to her late husband's. She wondered who had learned from whom. "No, thank you," she said quietly.

"Now, can you tell me what's wrong?" Narcissa asked.

"It's, it's about your former husband. Lucius Malfoy," Hermione said.

Narcissa's face darkened. "I rue the day I ever married him," she said quietly. "For all his posturing, he's a rude and uncouth lout. And his political policies are morally repugnant to me." She frowned suddenly. "You are the caretaker of Azkaban, are you not? If he is making trouble for you…"

"It depends how you define trouble," Hermione said, injecting all the bitterness she felt about the current political situation into her voice.

The lines on Narcissa's forehead deepened. "What do you mean?" she asked.

Hermione shook her head. "I can't say it," she whispered.

Myriad emotions flitted over Narcissa's face. Confusion, slight understanding, shock and finally settling on horror. "You can't mean…" she said, a sharp edge in her voice.

"Yes," Hermione said softly. "I really didn't know who to go to. He's charmed everybody else into his pockets. I thought, maybe, since you were married to him for so long that you'd understand." She felt her face turn red. "Not that I'm implying anything!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, I understand," Narcissa said grimly.

The next thing Hermione felt was the older woman's arms going around her. She stiffened slightly and then consciously relaxed her body. "Thank you," she said. "Almost all today I was… I just didn't know what you'd say. I felt so stupid for sending out that owl. I mean, I don't even know you that well except by," her lips twisted, "association."

"It was the right decision," Narcissa said as she sat down in her own chair again.

Hermione widened her eyes. "Oh, please don't tell him I told you," she begged. "Please don't tell anybody. I couldn't bear for this to get out. It's just too … embarrassing." She let out a self-deprecating laugh. "It sounds so silly, doesn't it? But I just … don't want people looking at me, thinking, 'Oh that's the girl Lucius Malfoy raped'."

Narcissa's lips thinned. "You have my word, Hermione. But he cannot be allowed to do this to you again."

Hermione felt a slight constriction around her heart and wondered what the older woman planned for Lucius.

"May I ask," Narcissa said and then hesitated. "May I ask how he managed it?"

Panic suddenly filled Hermione. They hadn't discussed this aspect. Somehow she suspected that Lucius was rather embarrassed and horrified by the whole cover story. "It was my fault," she said quietly, thinking fast. "I wanted to make sure all the people in Azkaban had at least a minimum standard of living conditions. When I went into his cell, he looked ill so I decided that he should be moved into our cottage – the one that I share with the others." She gave a bitter laugh. "What a stupid plan! He seemed so nice those first few weeks. Almost… non Malfoy-like. And then one day when nobody else was there in the cottage… it happened." She bit her lip. "That was a few weeks ago. I haven't gone near him since." Hermione had decided that the best lie was one supplemented with truth.

Narcissa looked at her with sympathy in her eyes. "You have my word that he will pay for what he did to you."

Hermione widened her eyes. "But how? He's already in … prison."

She tilted her head. "Surely you haven't forgotten the new prison my late husband, bless his soul, established? I can easily arrange a transfer."

"But wouldn't it be the same?"

"I can assure you," Narcissa told her, "that it will not be the same."

Hermione shot the older woman a grateful look. "I can't say how much I'm grateful for this," she said with as much sincerity as possible.

Narcissa laid a delicate hand on Hermione's own. "You forget that I lived with the man for almost twenty years. I know him well and this, frankly doesn't surprise me." She gave a tiny laugh. "I have to admit that this is as much for me as you."

"Thank you," Hermione said, standing up. "I should probably get back now. And, Narcissa, I am sorry again for your loss."

"The transfer should be very soon."

Hermione walked through the Ministry towards the exit in almost a daze. She hadn't thought that Narcissa would believe her so completely, but she supposed people didn't usually question rape victims. Except Muggle defence attorneys, she thought cynically as she remembered the TV shows she used to watch at times in the holidays.

Only outside the Ministry did Hermione let some of the horror she felt at Narcissa's words show on her face. Narcissa certainly doesn't play around with punishments, she thought, and wondered what Lucius would say once she told him of his imminent transfer to another prison.

**-**

Lucius cornered Hermione that evening as she was about to enter her quarters. With no small annoyance, she motioned for him to go inside and once they were both within her room, she cast a general localised silencing spell.

"Now tell me how it really went?" he asked her as he sat down on the chair she always kept by her bed.

"I told everybody before," Hermione said, rather annoyed. "It went fine. Narcissa believed me."

"Why don't I believe you?" Lucius gave a smirk. "Let me see. You kept on giving me surreptitious glances all during dinner. I don't think that's modesty, given what happened a week ago. I decided to ask you what you wanted to tell me before you managed to convince yourself that it wasn't necessary after all.

Hermione could feel her face turning red. Could he read me so well, she wondered, or is it simply a series of lucky guesses? "I was telling the truth," she protested. "She did believe me."

She could feel his eyes scrutinise her as she stared at a spot above his head. Hermione didn't feel like she was up to looking him in the eye and lying. Finally, he nodded. "So what aren't you telling me?"

She let out a long breath. "You would have found out sooner or later."

His voice was deceptively calm. "What would I have found out?"

"She plans on transferring you to the London prison," Hermione said flatly. "I will tell the others later."

In all the time she had seen Lucius, from her childhood up until a few minutes, she had never seen him look truly shocked. Mildly surprised, yes, but not shocked. Now, however, he had an expression of shock with no small amount of horror on his face. "That," he said slowly, "was a possibility I had considered, but not seriously."

Hermione blinked slowly. It sounded like Lucius doubted her ability to make Narcissa believe their – rather outlandish, she had to admit – story. "I rather thought the entire purpose was to make her believe the story," she pointed out. "Her reaction is reasonable in the circumstances."

He turned to look her in the eye. "You believe that my raping somebody is that easily believable to somebody who had been married to me for twenty years?"

She had a feeling, a quite familiar feeling, but one foreign to her so far where Lucius Malfoy was concerned. Biting her lip, Hermione realised that she was feeling guilty. "I didn't say that," she protested. "I was the person who said that the idea was rather improbable in the first place. You decided that it was believable to Narcissa because she hated you!"

Slowly, Lucius seemed to nod, although it was more of a painful half-inclination of the head. "I just never believed that she would think that of me," he said, sounding more like he was talking to himself.

Hermione would never know what possessed her to open her mouth then, but it opened, inexorably and the words came spilling out. "You were a Death Eater," she pointed out in a voice that even made herself cringe inside. It was her best what Ron and Harry had called her Know-It-All voice. "You must have committed countless atrocities. Doubtless she knew about them. What makes it so unbelievable that she would believe this?" If she had stopped then, then perhaps Lucius would simply have stalked out of her room, furious, but she had to add one more sentence. "For all I know, you have done things like that before." It felt like the events of the past days and weeks had been building up and a dam inside her had opened.

Lucius froze. During her tirade he had turned his head towards the door, eyes narrowed, but now he slowly turned back to face her again. Hermione shivered. His grey eyes seemed to burn with … something, she didn't want to know what. "Did you just say what I thought you said?" he said icily.

Hermione licked her lips, which had suddenly become very dry. "What did you think I said?" she asked.

"Did you just imply that I had perhaps raped a woman before?" Lucius said, seeming perfectly calm and level but for the eyes.

Dumbly, she nodded and then wondered what had possessed her to do such a stupid thing.

He stood up and walked over to where she was standing near the door, until he was right next to her. When he spoke, his voice tickled her ear. "I will have you know, _Hermione,"_ he said, his voice a low hiss, "that I have never, _ever_, taken a woman who was unwilling." He paused, but she didn't dare to turn her head to look at him. "But perhaps," he said in a casual tone, "I have been wrong. Now would be a perfect time to test the theory. We could give Narcissa physical evidence of suspicions planted."

Hermione paled. "Don't be ridiculous," she said faintly.

"Ridiculous, ridiculous," he mocked with a sneer. "Everything is ridiculous to you." As she turned her head, she could see a gleam in the eyes so close to her. "Perhaps I ought to take advantage of this silencing spell."

So quickly that Hermione didn't even register it, her wand was snatched out of her robe pocket and flung across the room. Lucius grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the wall. There's going to be a bruise there, Hermione thought faintly, feeling the circulation cut off from one of her hands. She wondered how he had gotten so strong. She tried to struggle but his pin was iron hard. When she tried to kick, one of his legs insinuated itself between hers.

"I wouldn't do that. The rules of this particular game have changed, my dear Hermione," Lucius breathed in her ear. "I'm in charge now."

"Lucius," she said, with firmness that she didn't feel. "Please. This isn't like you."

He suddenly bent over and pressed his lips against hers with almost bruising force. Hermione felt a slight tingle go through her and then the kiss was finished, almost as soon as it had started.

"It isn't like me?" Lucius curled his upper lip, but she noticed that his breathing was uneven. "You seem to think it is. My former wife seems to think it is. Surely the wizarding world does not think any different. And what are we but pawns to public opinion?"

"Don't do this," she tried again, a slight tremor building up in her voice. "You said that you aren't like this. Are you going to betray your own morals?"

He gave her a dark smile. "Isn't that what being a Death Eater is all about?"

"That was years ago."

"Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater." Lucius said the words almost like he was reciting a mantra of sorts. With a shiver, Hermione realised that he might be. "The Dark Lord said it and the Ministry says it."

"Severus was one," she argued. "He isn't now."

"Ah," he gave a small snort, "my dear friend Severus. Dumbledore's lapdog." His eyes fixed on a spot above Hermione's head, probably where he had pinned my hands, she thought.

Then, with almost the same suddenness with which he had grabbed her, he let her go and stepped backwards. "But you're right," he said, with sudden bitterness. "I do not betray my own morals, despite what others might think. I will go back to my cell, supposing you are so kind as to give me that."

Hermione blinked as she realised what Lucius was referring to. He's almost as masochistic as Severus, she thought and then frowned. But he did try to rape you, another voice chimed in. He didn't do anything, she argued back. I … I hurt his feelings. "You're still welcome in our company," she ventured.

He looked at her with a faint curl of his upper lip. "Aren't you scared I'll try that again?"

Hermione shook her head. "I'm sorry about what I said before." Without waiting for a response, she walked to the door. Just as she was about to turn the knob and break the silencing spell, she suddenly realised something. Turning around, she stared at Lucius. "What about the non-violence spell."

Lucius shrugged. "Easily overcome," he said, his voice nonchalant.

It was then that Hermione wondered what horrors might have happened had Lucius not been on their side.

So far, she added to herself as Lucius walked past her and she shut the door again.

**-**

The summons came faster that Hermione had anticipated. A scarce two days had passed since she went to the Ministry and already she felt a change in the wards around the island. Strangers were getting off at the boat dock. Pulling on a jumper to ward off the chilly spring air, she hurried out of the cottage, leaving the sick prisoner in Will's startled care. Going through the gate, Hermione noticed the Ministry emblem emblazoned at the side of the vessel. Two men and a woman were getting out of the rather large boat.

She strode up to them. "I assume you are Ministry representatives sent by Narcissa Corley."

The woman stared down her nose at Hermione and she was given an unpleasant reminder of how Narcissa had looked at her at that Quidditch World Cup so long ago. "We are," she said. Her voice had a faint accent that Hermione couldn't place. She thought it might have been Asian, but that didn't go with the appearance of the brown-haired, blue-eyed woman. "We are here to collect the prisoner."

The two men didn't say anything.

"This way," Hermione said, and spun around. She walked off without looking behind to make sure that they were following. The prisoner? She realised what tactics they were using. If you dehumanise a person, she thought, then you can do anything to him or her. If they are no longer Lucius, or Mister Malfoy, but become an abstract like 'the prisoner', anything can be done. She gave an involuntary shiver.

"It is rather chilly out here, is it not?"

Hermione turned and noticed that the woman had caught up to her and was now walking in pace with her. No, she corrected, the woman was walking half a pace behind and obviously was very careful to keep in step. "It is," she agreed.

"How unfortunate for the prisoner," the woman commented.

"Yes," Hermione said, blandly but inside she was fuming. After all she had worked so hard for, it was so easy for the Ministry to come here and take a prisoner away? Even without basic considerations? Granted, she admitted, I did give them permission. She let out a soft breath and decided to make conversation. She was leading them the long way around to the Maximum Security Unit. Hermione hoped dearly that Harry had noticed the shift in wards as well and had immediately bundled Lucius into Maximum Security. "Your accent," she said, with a brief smile. "Where do you come from?"

The woman gave her an enigmatic smile. "Few ever notice it. Where do you think it comes from?"

Hermione frowned thoughtfully. There were few things she liked better than a good puzzle and as much as her goals might be different from this woman's, she felt that the other woman was intelligent and that was always a plus. "Somewhere in China?" she guessed. "In Asia, definitely."

Now, the woman's smile was genuine, Hermione noticed. All the signs Lucius had told her were there. Crinkled eyes, ends of eyebrows slightly downwards. "I grew up in the People's Republic," she said. "My parents were scholars. They wanted to study the origins of Chinese magic, which are rumoured to be different from those of Western magic." She paused and wrinkled her nose. They had just walked from the Minimum Security wing into the Medium Security wing.

Correctly guessing the reason for the expression the woman pulled, Hermione said, "This is why I'm taking you this way. You get used to the smell, but if we went directly to Maximum Security, I wouldn't be surprised if you threw up. I did the first time I went in there. The smell's a lot better now but it seems to have seeped into the stone." There, she thought with satisfaction. That's almost the truth.

"I can deal with strong smells," the woman told her.

"So," Hermione said, wanting to change the topic, "tell me about the origins of Chinese magic?"

The woman's eyes gleamed. She obviously recognised a fellow intellectual. "Did you know that Dementors originated in ancient China?"

Hermione was genuinely surprised. "No, I didn't. What were they used for?"

"The Emperors of China used the Dementors as Guards in their tombs. To protect the treasure and to guide them into the afterlife. It was believed that Dementors were guardians of souls for eternity."

Hermione shivered. It sounded macabre to her. Suddenly, a thought hit her. "All the Emperors?" she asked.

The woman looked at her with faint admiration. "Chinese magic at first only manifested itself in the Royal family. Nobody knows why, but some suspect magic was suppressed in commoners by means of a large scale ward. Some even consider that the Great Wall of China was a sinister symbol. But sometime in early last century, magic suddenly bloomed in China. Suddenly there were witches and wizards in every walk of life. It caused such bloody revolution that even the Muggles picked up on it. It was said that before that the Chinese had a way of controlling Dementors." She shrugged delicately. "If they did, it was lost in flames."

Hermione could feel her mind whirring. She had never read much on non-Western magics (there simply wasn't enough material on it in the Hogwarts library)but if what the woman said was true, the results… She shivered. The results could be catastrophic.

She mentally pinched herself. They were nearing Lucius's cell now. As they came closer, she breathed a sigh of relief to see a man in ragged clothing sitting on a low cot. "Lucius Malfoy," she said loudly and the man stirred. "You are being transferred to the new prison in London."

Slowly, almost painfully it seemed, Lucius got to his feet. "Whatever for?" he said insolently. "It's fine here." He sneered at Hermione.

Hermione bit her lip and looked over to the three who had followed her. The two men still had impassive faces, but the woman was looking over Lucius. "He looks far too healthy," was her only comment.

Hermione blinked and bit her tongue. If this was healthy, she thought, then I don't want to know where Lucius is being transferred to. With a heavy heart, she handed opened the gate of the cell. Immediately, one of the men cast a Stupefy on Lucius (she could see that he too had an altered wand).

As they walked back outside, Hermione asked, "Would you three like to stay for some lunch?"

Almost as one they shook their heads.

"This was a business visit," the woman explained as they loaded Lucius's limp body onto the small boat. "We are on a tight schedule."

A tight schedule for what? Hermione wanted to ask. "It was very informative speaking to you," she said, with a smile that was almost genuine.

The woman gave her a faint smile in return as the boat pushed off the pier.

I'm sorry, Hermione thought as she watched it depart. I'm sorry, Lucius. Her hand automatically came up to touch her mouth and then she jerked it away as if it burned her. Don't be insane, she told herself.

Don't be insane.

**-**

In the days following Lucius's incarceration in the London prison, Hermione busied herself with looking after prisoners. She felt helpless to do anything since her attempt to help had only put them in deeper strife. In almost desperation, she wandered over to Minimum Security and to Rebecca Wang's cell. That young girl who was barely a woman but had been a Death Eater, Hermione told herself savagely, had intrigued her on the first day.

When she got there, she found the girl sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"Isn't it cold?" was Hermione's first comment, blurted out.

The girl look up, her eyes barely registering surprise. "Not particularly," she said quietly.

"How have you been finding the conditions recently?" Hermione asked, determined to make this a business visit.

Rebecca shrugged. "Tolerable? Liveable? Better than before, certainly."

Hermione had the urge to strangle the ungrateful brat.

"But surely that isn't why you came?" Rebecca asked.

Hermione bit her bottom lip. What came out when she spoke surprised even herself. "What do you know about China's old methods of controlling Dementors?"

Rebecca's dark eyes gleamed but she never got off the floor. Her eyes wandered everywhere, only occasionally landing on Hermione. When they did, Hermione got the distinct sensation of cold sliding down her spine. Those eyes glittered. "What makes you think I know anything?"

Hermione wasn't sure, but she couldn't admit that. Besides, it couldn't hurt to ask. "Because you come from that country."

"Good response," Rebecca said slowly. "Not good enough. Surely you weren't about to say: Because you're Chinese, were you? That would have been a gross generalisation."

Of course not, Hermione told herself, but she wasn't sure. "No, I wasn't about to say that."

"Good," Rebecca said, suddenly getting off the floor. She went over to stand by the bars. "Because if you did, then I would be furious."

Hermione resisted the urge to ask her what she could do, even if she was furious, but then decided she didn't really want to know. What if she could do something?

"My parents knew something," Rebecca suddenly said dreamily. "But they never told me. They were killed by my comrades even though they were supporters!" She let out a high pitched giggle. "Ooops, I wasn't supposed to use that word." She lowered her voice. "It's unpatriotic to England." Her eyes narrowed. "But I'm not English, am I? I'll always be Chinese – yellow trash – to them, regardless of what is on my arm and what I do."

With a start, Hermione realised the girl was insane, or close to becoming it. Rebecca was ranting now in incoherent sentences and Hermione backed away until she was out of Minimum Security altogether. The shrill shrieks could still be heard at the door but as she shut it, it deadened the noise.

She was pale. Rebecca's parents were tortured by Death Eaters and they supposedly knew how to control Dementors? That couldn't be good news.

Taking another leave of absence wasn't particularly a wise idea, Hermione knew, but she didn't particularly care at this moment. It wasn't as though Azkaban couldn't run smoothly without her.

Almost everybody she had tried to contact from the Voldemort Wars seemed to have disappeared or been branded a traitor. Some seemed to have moved abroad and then disappeared. Others had simply disappeared from everyday life without a trace. Finally, out of desperation, she had written to Padma Patil. She had gotten to know the girl relatively well during her seventh year. And besides, she was the only one who Hermione knew, trusted, thought could help and who wasn't in prison or gone.

To her surprise, within a day her owl came back bearing a return letter. Padma's letter had been terse, but she mentioned that she was working for the Department of History in the Ministry. Hermione wondered whether she could help in the search for the elusive old Chinese way of controlling Dementors. She suspected that they were being used for the new prison and perhaps for more sinister purposes.

Not bothering with a reply, Hermione left immediately.

Arriving at the Ministry three hours later, Hermione deliberately cast a 'do not notice' spell on herself and loitered around the exit. She didn't notice anything unusual, except for the strange amount of Ministry propaganda posters pinned onto walls. She could have sworn that they hadn't been there the last time she was here, but wasn't sure. One of them caught her eye. _Report dissidents and help create a lasting peace! _Hermione shivered and decided not to read any more posters. She knew enough of what was going on without needing such… obvious evidence.Two hours of incredibly boring and brain deadening waiting later, she saw a familiar flash of long, black hair. She removed the spell and hurried over to the other woman.

"Padma!" she exclaimed, when she was within earshot. "Imagine bumping to you here! I had just come up to buy some Muggle things and was thinking of sending you an owl, asking if I could visit."

Padma's face, which had been hostile at first, slowly thawed and finally a smile emerged. "Hermione?" she asked. "It's been so long." She glanced around and Hermione had the distinct impression Padma thought that she was being watched. "Shall we go and have some coffee?"

Hermione nodded. "That will be lovely. We could catch up."

"I'd like that," Padma said as she led the way to Diagon Alley. Once they were inside, she walked towards a small café, tucked away. "Here looks nice."

They sat down and ordered coffee from the waiter.

"Now," Padma said, "would you care to tell me the real reason you are here, Hermione?" Her words were pointed. "Nobody wanders around the Ministry exit without good reason. You don't even have any Muggle shopping bags."

She was good, Hermione thought with admiration. "I wanted to see you about some history."

Padma raised an eyebrow. "Surely that could be discussed by owl."

Hermione shook her head. "I'm afraid not." She leaned closer. "I would like to see your records on Chinese magic."

By Padma's reaction, Hermione thought that she must have said something else. There was no way that those innocuous words could elicit that kind of recoiling. Finally, Padma closed her eyes and leaned backwards. When she opened them again, she stared at Hermione. "I should have known you'd find about that. But surely you'd be more discreet?"

Hermione smiled despite herself. "Somebody once told me that discretion wasn't given to Gryffindors." That somebody had been Lucius.

Padma smiled too but it was soon wiped from her face. "I'm sorry," she said, with a touch of frost in her tone. "Those records were expunged."

"They were wiped?" Hermione said incredulously. "But nobody wipes historical records. It's foolish."

Tilting her head, Padma looked at her in surprise. "You didn't know?"

"Obviously not," Hermione said. "So they're gone? But I need to see them…" she trailed off. It was probably a hopeless quest anyway, she told herself. The Ministry would have caught me and sent me to a cosy cell with Ron and Lucius.

"I thought you knew…" Padma murmured. "Well, I knew there had to be a good reason for them to be wiped." She raised her eyebrows. "I would have never thought you'd be involved though, Hermione." She let out a long breath as her gaze flitted around. Obviously, she caught nothing suspicious as she looked back at Hermione and continued talking. "The Ministry's unhealthy nowadays."

Hermione jumped at Padma's echo of Ron's words.

Padma looked at her curiously and sipped her coffee. "I would help you," she said apologetically, "but asking around has become the quickest route to a treason sentence. In fact, I shouldn't be here talking to you right now." She reached for her purse and grabbed a handful of Galleons. Dumping them on the table, she stood up. "Hopefully I'll see you around, Hermione. In better times."

And just like that, she left. Hermione watched after the departing figure, clad in black Ministry robes and wondered why the Ministry had deleted the records.

Author Notes: RL sucks. That is all I have to say. But thank you to everybody who reviewed the previous chapter. 3


	8. Chapter 8

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

**Chapter 8**

Three hours later, Hermione was standing outside Narcissa's office (again, she thought to herself wearily) with bated breath. She had managed to wrangle a visit on such short notice with the intent of telling Narcissa that she wanted to see Lucius 'settled in' to his new accommodations. She hoped that Narcissa would read malicious intent into those words.

The office door swung open and Narcissa stepped out, giving Hermione a warm smile. Immediately, Hermione felt a small twinge of guilt that she was doing this. Narcissa seemed genuinely nice. She quashed the feeling without mercy. "Narcissa," she said with a crinkly-eyed smile of her own. "It's _wonderful _to see you again."

Narcissa smiled again and motioned for Hermione to go into her office. As Hermione watched the door close behind her, she noticed that there was a small line of magical fire going around the door. "It's magically sealed," she exclaimed in surprise.

The older woman nodded. "One cannot be too careful nowadays," she said in the same tone of voice as if she had been telling Hermione that she received threats of assassination every day. Somehow Hermione doubted that she did. Narcissa looked far too… groomed for somebody who was running the wizarding world. Her long blue robes were impeccable (and strange, Hermione thought, as one who was used to regulation black) and her long blonde hair was swept up in a twist. Her eyes were bright and there was not a hint of tiredness in them. Then again, Hermione thought, she's probably a brilliant actress.

"I suppose so," Hermione said, not knowing what else to say.

Narcissa sat down and waved for Hermione to do the same. "What brings you to my office again so soon?" she asked. "Not that I am not glad to see you."

Hermione smiled and hoped the smile conveyed what she wanted it to convey: happiness, relief and a slight desire for revenge. Frankly, she had no idea how a smile could convey such things; she had never read revenge in somebody else's smile, but she supposed that other people might be able to. Not knowing how to begin, she decided to be blunt. "I would like to see Lucius," she said. Lucius had told her that in order to lie effectively, a person should use mainly truth. And that is the truth, she told herself. I do want to see Lucius, to make sure that he's okay.

Narcissa raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "I would have thought that you would be glad to be rid of him," she said, slight suspicion colouring her voice.

"Oh, I am!" Hermione hastened to reassure her. "It's just…" she trailed off. "I want to see that he's being… _properly_ treated."

A light slowly came into Narcissa's eyes. She nodded. "I see," she said, her lips curving into a smile. "But there are still strict laws against visiting the new prison. I'm afraid I cannot let you."

Hermione let her lower lip stick out slightly, like that of a petulant child, she thought. This was a risky manoeuvre, she thought. "Even for retribution purposes?" she asked.

One of Narcissa's eyebrows rose further until they were almost obscured by tendrils of her hair. "Retribution?" she repeated. "Don't you know that it is illegal and immoral to harm another person even for revenge?"

Hermione's eyes gleamed. She hoped that Narcissa would take it for anticipation, but it was anger. You took revenge against Lucius, she thought. "Have you ever heard of the Muggle phrase 'An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth'?" she said.

Narcissa smiled slightly. "Knowledge is a weapon," she said quietly. "Of course, I have and I happen to know that it's translated incorrectly. The original Hebrew speaks of reimbursement not retribution."

Hermione was surprised, to say the least. She hadn't known that Narcissa would be familiar with Muggle biblical references. "I was referring to that quote as a generality," she explained. Shrugging, she said, "I wouldn't hurt him… much." It was a dangerous game she was playing, but Hermione was almost positive that Narcissa wouldn't put her in jail. Yet, she thought. Her curiosity would need to be sated first.

"Do you even know what you want to do to Lucius?" Narcissa inquired, sounding only mildly curious.

Hermione let a slow smile spread across her face. Apparently, it made her look vaguely dangerous. "Lets just say I've researched the topic thoroughly," she said quietly.

"Sometimes practical experience far outweighs theory," Narcissa pointed out.

"Surely you will give me the chance to get this practical experience?" Hermione asked.

Narcissa stared at her for a long moment. "I will let you visit him, on one condition." She held up a finger and Hermione wondered what the condition would be. "I will accompany you."

Hermione let out a slow breath that she hoped would be taken for relief. "Thank you," she said, but inwardly she was worried. What did Narcissa expect anyway, she wondered. Did she think that I meant I wanted to torture him? Mental torture? Physical torture? _Sexual_ torture? And then she wondered whether Narcissa expected her to go through with it.

"Don't thank me," Narcissa said. She gave a slight smile. "I admit to some academic curiosity, that's all. You were a Gryffindor, were you not?"

She nodded. "But the hat wanted to put me in Ravenclaw," Hermione said, not knowing why she was being so honest. She shrugged. "Besides, our personalities do change over the years."

"It's just," Narcissa said slowly, "the conversation we just had was rather… Slytherin." Her eyes gleamed. "Are you sure you haven't been getting ideas from, perhaps, my old friend Severus?"

Hermione hurried to control her breathing and hoped that red hadn't crept into her cheeks. "Of course not!" she said indignantly.

Narcissa tilted her head to one side. "Might I inquire as to why not, then? You did campaign for his release."

"But," Hermione said firmly, feeling somewhat guilty with herself for using this argument, "he wasn't released. It would be wrong for me to treat him any differently from any regular prisoner." Narcissa was looking at her strangely so Hermione decided to add one more line. "However," she said with an embarrassed laugh, "I have to admit, I do sometimes give him extra food and stuff. He did save my life, after all."

Narcissa looked at her for a few more seconds. "I see," she said, with a nod.

Hermione sincerely hoped that the older woman did _not _see, but she couldn't very well ask her. "Thank you for this," she said, sincerely. "I'm not sure how I can repay you."

"I'm sure you can find a way to."

"Could I see Ron while I was there as well?" Hermione inquired, taking a chance and throwing it out there.

Narcissa's eyes immediately turned cold. "I'm afraid not," she said. "I'm already bending the rules for this."

Inwardly, Hermione felt almost like a traitor for not asking to see Ron first before Lucius, but her gut instinct told her that Lucius had more chance of finding a way to escape the new prison. Perhaps even knowing how to control the Dementors, she hoped. She wondered whether Narcissa could see through her act.

She suspected that Narcissa did.

The name of the London Prison, Hermione found out on the way, was _Versteckt_. Rather amusing, she thought. If she recalled her primary school German correctly, then that name translated to _Hidden_ in English. Then again, her memory had always been surprisingly good and she had spent many hours looking through the English-to-German dictionary checking up random interesting words. Her amusement faded quickly, however, as she was directed from the Ministry limousine towards a seemingly innocuous wall. She then realised the prison was hidden.

"The wall is an illusion that is solid for anybody not keyed to it," the driver had told her. "The Minister will be waiting for you inside."

With the same slight apprehension she felt the first time she walked onto Platform 9 ¾, Hermione walked quickly towards the wall. As she came within touching distance, she closed her eyes and felt a slight shift of the air around her.

"Lovely to see you again," came a female voice.

Hermione opened her eyes and saw Narcissa standing there. She had several guards standing next to her and, Hermione squinted, in one of the dark corridors that seemed to be branching off their current room, she thought she could see a dark shadow that looked suspiciously like a Dementor. The room they were standing in was high, cold and made out of grey flagstones, not unlike those at Azkaban. Apparently, all wizarding prisons are the same. It generally had a rather ominous feel -- not, she admitted, that Azkaban created happy feelings. It would look rather strange to have normal decorations up in a prison.

"Thank you again for allowing me this, Narcissa," she said.

Narcissa gave an abrupt little nod. Then, turning to the guards, she said, "I will no longer be needing your services this afternoon. I will come to find you once we are finished here."

They looked at her in surprise and just stood there.

Her glare intensified. "That was an order," she said softly.

As Hermione watched, the guards exchanged quick glances and hurried off down one of the many corridors that seemed to lead off the room.

"This way," Narcissa said as she turned her gaze back towards Hermione. She spun around and began to walk towards the corridor where Hermione had first spied the dark, Dementor-like shape. Hermione followed, suppressing a shudder.

"Do I need to ask what you are planning to do today?" Narcissa said, almost conversationally.

"I have a general idea," Hermione hedged.

Narcissa let out a low laugh. "I take that to mean that you aren't really sure. I suspected so."

To Hermione's surprise, she didn't sound furious or even mildly angry.

"Don't worry," Narcissa said quietly as they walked past cells. The cells didn't have open barring like at Azkaban, but rather had a grill up the top and a small opening down the bottom where food could be slid inside. "I have a plan that should satisfy you." Hermione couldn't stop the surprise from showing on her face and as Narcissa turned her head, even in the dim light, she could see it. "Didn't I already tell you that I don't have a particular liking for Lucius?" she said, sounding faintly amused.

Hermione paled and then immediately hoped that it didn't show in the faint light. She didn't like the sound of what Narcissa was planning. Anything that would satisfy Narcissa's thirst for revenge would be contrary to Hermione's own wishes. Of course, she couldn't say that. "Hmmm," she said.

They walked along in silence for about another minute before Narcissa stopped in front of a door with a large Q on it. At Hermione's surprised look, because none of the other rooms were marked, she explained, "Lucius was moved in here this morning. It is the Questioning Room."

Somehow Hermione didn't like the idea of the Questioning Room, especially in a prison like Versteckt. She had heard moans, guttural, inhuman noises from the rooms they had passed. It reminded her of Azkaban when she had first arrived and she didn't like the reminder.

Narcissa touched the door handle and the door silently swung open. "It's keyed to me," she told Hermione without looking back.

As they entered the room, Hermione saw Lucius at the far end of the rather large room, chained to the wall with what she immediately recognised as magical shackles. Magical shackles had a certain look to them and restrained almost all movement in the prisoner. The only motion Lucius seemed to have control of was of his head. As soon as they entered, his head jerked up and Hermione saw a brief flicker of surprise in his eyes that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

Apparently Narcissa saw it too because she tilted her head to one side and said, "Surprised, Lucius?"

"I would have never thought that the Mudblood would have enough courage to visit," Lucius said with a sneer.

Hermione was surprised at how much those words hurt. It wasn't so much the words as the expression of loathing with which Lucius delivered them. "I'm not as weak as you might think, _Lucius_," she said icily.

"I never," he coughed, the sound dry and hacking, "thought you were." His eyes gleamed. "You struggle well."

Hermione clenched her hands into fists. And that part was true, she thought. Automatically she touched her wrist, which had the remnants of a fading bruise on it. "Tell me," she said, with more than a touch of bitterness, "how would you like to experience what I experienced?" Narcissa looked at her in surprise as she said this words, but Hermione kept a mildly amused smile on her face.

"I'm sure you'd love to," Lucius said with a curled lip. "But perhaps as a Mudblood you are unacquainted with wizarding law. In our world, we care for basic human rights."

The laugh that emerged out of Hermione's lips wasn't forced at all. "Then explain Azkaban," she pointed out.

"Mistakes happen," Lucius said a matter-of-factly. "But surely," he turned towards Narcissa, "you won't allow mistakes to happen this time."

Hermione turned her head slightly and saw a slow smile spread over Narcissa's face. "I wouldn't be so sure of that, Lucius," she said softly. "For you see, Hermione here had been rather hurt by your … actions."

"I rather thought that was the point," Lucius said, sneering. "She's just a little Mudblood, why do you even care? When we were married, you were none-too-fond of them yourself. I remember you used to call them a scourge upon the earth and that you would do all that was possible to cleanse the world of them."

Hermione tried not to hear the words, but they seemed to cut into her like a knife through butter. She wondered whether these were Lucius's true feelings and whether he'd been simply pretending when they were talking. After all, she realised, Lucius is probably the best liar I know, Narcissa included. But still, she told herself, he does have to establish himself in her eyes. "Could we just get on with it," she said, her voice tight.

Narcissa smiled at her, a smile that would seem benevolent on anybody else's face but seemed to be twisted on hers. "Indeed we can," she said. She reached into the pocket of her robes and extracted a tiny slip of parchment. "I took the liberty of researching this spell. It's an ancient Greek spell." She handed it to Hermione.

Hermione looked at the small slip of parchment and looked at the three words written upon it. "What does this do?" she asked.

When Narcissa answered, Hermione felt that it was more for Lucius's benefit than her own. "It's really too bad we no longer have too many of these spells," she said idly. "Tell me, Hermione, who was the most powerful female avenger in ancient Greece?"

A frown creased Hermione's forehead and she hesitated. "Probably Medea."

"And for Lucius, who surely isn't as up to date on his Muggle myths as we are, what happened in that particular story?" Narcissa asked.

"Well," Hermione said, wondering where this was going. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach that told her that she wouldn't like it. "Medea killed her husband and two children in revenge after her husband was betrothed to another woman."

"It's fascinating how _interesting_ Muggle myths are. Hermione, you might be interested to know that witches in that time, upon hearing the Muggle tale, were _inspired_ to create that very spell you are now holding in your fingers." Narcissa turned to Lucius and walked over. Her long fingers stroked the side of his face. "Aren't you interested to know what the spell does?"

Lucius was silent but after a minute of no response, Hermione asked softly, "What does it do?"

"You'll be delighted," Narcissa said, in a reassuring tone. "It's almost a perfect revenge spell. I couldn't have designed it better myself."

Hermione was liking the sound of the spell less and less by the second.

"The best part of the spell," Narcissa said softly, her voice barely above a whisper but still completely audible, "is that once cast, the man barely knows that it's there. He'll walk away thinking that everything is fine. But over the hours, the spell brings him closer and closer to orgasm." Her eyes flashed. "And this next part is the best. It brings about a permanent state of _painful _penile erection and unless the man manages to find a willing woman before twenty-four hours is up, the penis just falls off." She gave what sounded like a delighted laugh. "Isn't that just perfect?"

Hermione could see that Lucius had turned very pale.

"And," Narcissa continued, "that is the fate you will enjoy once Hermione here casts the spell." She smiled.

"I wouldn't be so sure," Lucius said, but the fear was evident in his voice.

"Surely you cannot expect either of you to help you?" Narcissa said, sounding amused.

"This is tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment," Lucius spat out. "You could lose your position over this."

Narcissa tilted her head to one side. "And who will tell?" she pointed out.

Hermione was beginning to severely doubt her own judgement in coming here in the first place. Lucius looked thinner than before, but not as thin as he had been those first few days she had arrived at Azkaban. Other than that, there were no visible bruises or cuts. But there was a haunted expression in his eyes. Hermione bit the inside of her cheek. She had read once that repeated exposure to Dementors, with periods of rest, were worse than continual exposure. Apparently, the healed mind broke faster.

By the expression in Lucius's eyes, she concluded that he too was questioning her sanity at coming here. Surely the possibility of a Dementor Army wasn't that important, not important enough to warrant her coming here.

But deep down, Hermione knew that if she had the decision to make again, even knowing what she knew now, she would still do the same thing. The disappearance of the Dementors from public view was a terrifying event that she knew that she should have noticed earlier. But after her first question to the Minister, Hermione had half-forgotten about the whole issue. She had been so immersed in the day to day running of Azkaban, which had been a mammoth task. To get an answer to the Dementor problem was her main goal. And if Lucius had it, she had to speak to him.

Despite the fact Lucius had become something of a friend to her – possibly more, a tiny niggling voice whispered – she still considered the welfare of the entire wizarding world her main concern. Briefly, Hermione wondered why she insisted on always looking at the large picture and whether that was why she never had any lasting relationships.

She was jerked back to the present by a sharp look by Narcissa.

"He deserves it," Narcissa said softly. "He deserves it for what he did to you."

But he didn't do anything, one part of Hermione's mind said, while another one agreed with Narcissa's sentiment. With a lump in her throat, Hermione took her wand out of her robe pocket, pointed it at Lucius who was staring at her, and said the words. As she said the rather guttural words, she could feel a surge of power through her. It was almost an addictive feeling, a feeling of complete control. And then, almost as fast as it had come, the feeling disappeared, leaving her feeling rather bereft.

"It feels wonderful, doesn't it?" Narcissa said, with a knowing smile.

Hermione refused to think of the possible meanings of that sentence. "What do I do now?" she asked.

"Wait," Narcissa told her. "In fact, I might just leave you two alone," she said, with a malicious smile. "Do what you will with him." She threw Lucius one more contemptuous look before walking towards the door. Just before she opened it, she turned her head. "If there is any trouble with him, just give a call. I'll station a guard outside the door," she told Hermione then opened the door and left.

Hermione gave a mute nod and then turned towards Lucius. He stared at her, looking straight at her wand. She was about to open her mouth when he gave an imperceptible shake of his head.

Suddenly, she realised that with Narcissa's propensity for knowing about Muggle objects, it was very likely that she knew about cameras and microphones and would have used them liberally. In fact, Hermione thought grimly, listening spells in the wizarding world were common. She bit her lip and tried to think of the right spell to counter both Muggle and wizarding listening and watching spells while not arousing suspicion. As Hermione thought, she realised that she couldn't use one spell, but rather had to use a complex weave of spells.

It began subtly at first, so as to not draw outside attention but with each mental incantation, the spell grew stronger. Biting her lip, Hermione clutched her wand tighter and began the slow mental chant. She sank deeper into her own mind and saw the room using her mind's eye. Both hers and Lucius's bodies glowed reddish-orange, while almost everything else looked like some shade of blue. Slowly, carefully, she eased her spell around them, cloaking the entire room in the subtle secrecy spell. This was a spell that she had created herself at the R & D department but had never had the chance to submit the paperwork to the Ministry proper. For that, she was very grateful.

Finally, with perspiration coating her upper lip, Hermione finished the spell.

"It should be safe to talk now," she said softly.

Lucius was looking at her with something akin to admiration. "What was that?" he asked. "It doesn't look like any sort of secrecy spell I've seen."

"I created it myself," she said. "If anybody listens in with listening devices, Muggle or magical, they'll only hear what they want to hear." She smiled faintly. "It's quite ingenious, even if I say so myself."

"It is," Lucius agreed. He closed his eyes for a second and then opened them again. "What possessed you to come here?" he demanded. "Surely you should have known something like this would happen."

A faint flush came over her cheeks. "I had an idea that she might try something like this, but I had no idea that it would be so drastic," she said defensively. "Besides, we have a problem."

"Well," he said sharply, when she stopped. "What is the problem?"

"Shouldn't," she hesitated, "shouldn't we try to do something about the spell?"

Lucius let out a barking laugh. "Narcissa isn't the only one familiar with that spell. It's foolproof. Unless you're willing to somehow copulate with me, suck me off or wank me while I'm shackled to the wall, I suggest we talk about something else. Now tell me, what is the problem?"

"The Dementors," she said, deciding to ignore Lucius's crude words as she didn't know how to respond.

He stared at her. "The Dementors? But they're here."

"But," she pointed out, "what does Narcissa plan to do with them? There was surely a reason to remove them from Azkaban Island and place them in greater proximity to the Ministry." She paused. "I think... I think she plans on making a Dementor Army."

He looked at her strangely. "That isn't as far-fetched an idea as one might think," he admitted. "There are few Dementors around this prison, certainly fewer than there were at Azkaban. This prison is mainly staffed by wizards. It would certainly explain the lack of Dementors around here. But how?"

She sighed. "I don't know. It's just a hunch. But if it's true…" A shiver ran down Hermione's spine. "A Dementor Army, fully trained, would be almost invincible. It's…" she hesitated. "I was researching this a year or so ago. It is thought that Dementors are building immunity against Patronus."

Instead of looking surprised, Lucius almost looked like what she just said made a lot of sense. "I've heard the guards use two Expecto Patronum spells against one Dementor," he said.

She paled. "So the hypothesis is true. It makes it more likely that the rest is true. After all," she gave a faint smile, "that's what I would do if I were Narcissa. The Dementors can be promised the souls of the enemies. That should be more than enough to sate them."

"But what does all of this have to do with you being here?" Lucius pointed out. "Surely you could develop another spell against the Dementors in Azkaban. My help would be useless."

Hermione bit her lip. "Tell me," she said abruptly. "Have you ever been to China?"

He stared at her, obviously wondering why she had abruptly changed the topic. "Yes," he said. "While I was in Leningrad, I spent several holidays in China."

She nodded. "Did you ever hear of an ancient Chinese method of controlling Dementors?"

Lucius frowned. "I did hear something of that sort, but I thought that it was merely village gossip. I didn't really look into it."

"Dementors came from China. Did you know that?"

He blinked rapidly. "You're telling me that they _do_ have a way of controlling them?" he asked. "Why are you asking me? Surely there are other people who are more knowledgeable in Chinese culture and history than me?"

"But they are either working for the Ministry or have mysteriously disappeared," she told him. "You're the only person I thought might know."

"You risked your own life, my life, on a hunch? Two hunches?" he said, in a strange tone. "On the hunch that Narcissa might be building a Dementor Army and that I might know a way to stop it?"

She bit down on her bottom lip. Put that way, her decision sounded even worse than it had ever sounded in her own mind. "Something had to be done," she snapped. "And this was the best I could think of."

"Why?" he said sarcastically. "Didn't Potter want to help? What about my old friend Severus?"

"I thought that was the entire point of your little jaunt in this prison," she said evenly. "So that Narcissa could trust _me_. Surely she wouldn't have left the room if she hadn't at least trusted me slightly. Now would you please think back to your holidays in China? Can you remember when you first heard of the method of controlling Dementors?"

Lucius looked like he was going to argue but then seemed to remember that there was no real point in doing so. After all, he was on the wall in shackles. "I was talking to a village elder about how Dementors controlled our prisons in England. He looked rather surprised and mentioned something about a way to control Dementors. I thought he was senile at the time."

"What did he say?" she asked sharply. This could be the key to the whole problem.

Lucius frowned, and seemed to think back. "He said something about power and kings, that's all I can remember."

"I'm sure you can remember more," she said urgently. "You must."

He stared at her. "You aren't even sure that you're right on this hunch."

"The simplest solution is often the right one," she told him. "The Dementors disappeared. Narcissa has the wizarding world all but under her control. Surely they are part of her plan to consolidate power. Now think."

"He mentioned that it was rather simple to control the Dementors," Lucius recalled. "I think he said that any Chinese person could do it."

Hermione frowned. "What on earth could that mean? Maybe some sort of historical reference to power in China is the word or words to control them?"

"I had the impression that it was even simpler than that," Lucius admitted. "He seemed rather surprised that we would use Dementors to guard our prisons. I thought at the time that he didn't like the infringement on the rights of the prisoners, but with hindsight, maybe the Dementors have a previously unknown weakness?"

"Well," Hermione said when suddenly she felt a tingle of magic go up her wand hand. It was the proximity spell she had put on her secrecy spell. Sweat tingled on her forehead as she realised how much power she had put into the spell. That was why she didn't use it often. "Breach. Finite Incantatum," she said immediately and lifted up her wand, levelling it at Lucius's face. "How dare you smirk at me, you sanctimonious bastard!" she spat out as the door to the prison cell opened. Hermione thought she could detect a flicker of admiration in Lucius's eyes for her acting skills.

Narcissa walked inside and looked quite disappointed that Lucius was in one piece. "I think it's time I helped you," she told Hermione. "The spell will take another hour or so before he begins to feel the effect of it. As fun as yelling might be, I have something better." She flicked her wand in Lucius's direction. "Crucio."

Hermione gave an inward wince at how Lucius's body arched backwards, his head thudding against the stone wall. His eyes widened and bugged out while his mouth was shut tightly. She could see every muscle in his body tightening, tightening, while Lucius fought not to make a single noise. Sweat slowly beaded up on his forehead and a small droplet fell off his nose.

"Impressive," Narcissa acknowledged and turned to Hermione. "Surely, my dear, you would like to see him scream. He deserves it for what he did to you."

Hermione knew what Narcissa wanted her to do and was horrified. It was known that combining two of the same Unforgivable curse amplified the curse a countless number of times and was known to cause permanent brain damage in witches and wizards of weaker constitutions. She doubted that it would do anything that drastic to Lucius but she still didn't want to cast a spell of that magnitude on a man who hadn't actually done anything to her. If anything, she though wryly, it was I who sexually assaulted him. "That's illegal," she hedged.

"Don't worry," Narcissa reassured her, "this entire building is shielded. Nobody will find out."

This didn't particularly reassure her, but Hermione knew that if she protested then Narcissa would be suspicious. Holding her breath and hating herself, Hermione managed to get the three syllables out. Hoping that Narcissa wouldn't notice, she didn't put her entire power behind the spell. Still, the effect was instantaneous and terrifying.

Lucius's mouth immediately opened and a long, anguished, inhuman noise came out and only after it had stopped did Hermione realise that it was a scream. He began shaking, the chains holding him to the wall clattering together as his muscles trembled.

She wrinkled her nose as the pungent smell of the human bladder evacuating itself reached her nose but didn't say anything.

Narcissa was nowhere near as delicate. She arched an eyebrow. "I have to say I'm disappointed in you, Lucius. I would have thought that you would have more control." _Over your bodily functions, _was the implication.

Finally, after about a minute of silence, where Hermione saw a smirk playing about Narcissa's lips, Narcissa finally lifted the spell.

Lucius sagged in the chains and Hermione could see the sweat dripping off his face. "S-s-surely," he managed to gasp out, "you and t-t-the Mudblood can do b-better."

Narcissa simply tilted her head to one side and regarded him with an amused expression. "If we did any better then perhaps you wouldn't be alive." She turned to Hermione. "I cannot stand this smell," she said as she wrinkled her nose delicately. "I think he should be more amenable to what you say now." She walked towards the door and opened it. "I would cast a cleaning spell if I were you."

It took more energy than Hermione cared to lose in order to renew the secrecy spell. After she felt it was operational, she then cast a cleaning spell and immediately the pungent smell disappeared.

"I'm sorry," she said helplessly.

Lucius took deep breaths until his breathing was even again. When he spoke, what he said surprised her. "It isn't your fault," he managed to rasp.

"I should have done something." Hermione shook her head. "You were right. I shouldn't have come."

His overbright eyes stared at her. "You felt like you h-had a reason for coming," he said, obviously trying to keep his tone even and normal. He almost succeeded.

She blinked at him. "Are you sure that too many Unforgivables haven't addled your mind? That wasn't what you said a few minutes ago."

Lucius gave a dry, hacking laugh. "Who knows? Perhaps." He stiffened.

"What's the matter?" Hermione asked, wondering whether it was the aftershocks of Crucio. She had read about them.

"The spell," he said through gritted teeth. "It's… beginning to affect me."

Hermione resisted the immediate urge to glance in the affected region. "I'm sorry," she said for want of anything else to say.

Obviously, he could see that. "If you can't think of anything constructive to say," he said. The sentence began at a normal tone but ended on a gasp. "It's progressing _… rapidly_."

As subtly as she could, Hermione glanced at Lucius's crotch and could already see a slight bludge through the robes. She gave an inward shudder at the thought of what the spell meant. An idea began to occur to her, an idea made possible by her secrecy spell. Narcissa wouldn't be coming back immediately, would she? Hermione closed her eyes and would have died a thousand deaths before she admitted to herself that she didn't find the idea truly repugnant. Lucius Malfoy was an attractive man, even now when he was rather thin and shackled up against a wall.

Of course, she told herself sharply, that does not mean I _like_ him or anything like that. I'm just feeling guilty.

Taking a deep breath, she said quietly, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"The only way to help is…" Lucius began, sounding quite irritated, and was almost about to repeat his previous statement when he stopped. "You aren't seriously considering it, are you?" he finally said in flat tone. "That's ridiculous."

"It's my fault that you're in this situation," she said stubbornly. "If I hadn't listened to Severus's stupid plan then we'd all still be safe in Azkaban." Now that was a strange statement, she thought.

"I would not ask you to help me in this way," Lucius told her. "I would have thought you would be somewhat pleased. Is this not what I deserve?"

Hermione shrugged. She wasn't sure whether she would have even believed that a few months ago, but she doubted it. Humans were humans and despite what anybody had done in the past, a part of her still believed in rehabilitation. Such a Muggle belief, she thought to herself wryly. "You're not asking," she pointed out. "I'm offering." She couldn't believe she said those words and by the expression on Lucius's face, neither could he.

"I do not think you're an appropriate figure to be a virgin sacrifice," he said dryly.

Before she could stop herself, Hermione snapped, "What makes you think I'm a virgin?"

He just stared at her and somehow, despite their respective situations, Hermione felt like sinking into the stone floor. She couldn't believe what she just said. It simply wasn't like her to blurt out things like that about herself! "My mistake then," he said blandly. "I still believe that this is a bad idea."

"Why?" she demanded. To her horror and amazement, she felt somewhat offended that he had refused her – reasonable, she thought – offer. "Why would you rather wait twenty four hours or hope that Narcissa decides to take mercy on you?" A tiny sneer tugged at the corner of her mouth.

Lucius raised his eyebrows at her. "I'm sure you don't know how much you look like Narcissa when you do that."

"I'm not stupid enough to take that as a compliment, even if she was your former wife," Hermione snapped. "It's because I'm Muggle-born, isn't it? You can talk to me, you can work with me, but you can't stand to touch me." When he didn't reply, she lifted her wand. To her shock, Lucius winced slightly. "Finite Incantatum," she said. Turning around, Hermione left her room.

Lucius was silent, and the last thing she saw was a strange expression in his eyes as he stared at her while the door closed.

A guard was outside the room. "Get me Narcissa," Hermione ordered. "I'm leaving."

He looked surprised but complied.

A minute or two later, Narcissa arrived and Hermione was surprised to see her holding a cup of tea. "You look upset," she said, looking over Hermione shrewdly.

Hermione was rather surprised that she was upset. Who would have thought that I'm still sensitive about my birth, she thought, even though she knew full well that wasn't the entire reason why she was upset. "I can't stand to be in that room any more," she said frankly. "I'm sure he'll be writhing in pain soon enough."

Narcissa smirked. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to watch?"

"I'm a bit squeamish," Hermione admitted. "Plus, well, you know." She hoped that Narcissa would draw her own conclusions from her vague words.

It seems like Narcissa had, for she was nodding slowly. "Understandable," she said in a tone of voice that implied the exact opposite. "I will get you a car back to the Ministry."

"Thank you," Hermione said, relieved.

Author Notes: Thank you to everybody who reviewed. I don't really have time right now to respond individually (exams, urgh), but I appreciate all of them.


	9. Chapter 9

Author Notes: This fic is finished. New chapters will be uploaded every three days. Thank you to my betas silverbookworm, vexiphem and elinevere for their help. :) Reviews are very appreciated.

**Chapter 9**

"Do you think that it will actually work?" Harry asked Snape as they stood in the courtyard watching the prisoners. It felt vaguely reminiscent of watching free-range chickens roaming a yard, although Harry had no clue where that image came from.

"Which part?" Snape asked dryly. "The part where Hermione pretends to be raped by my old friend? Or perhaps you mean the part where Narcissa actually believes her. Or maybe what she's trying to do now which is suicidal, even by my standards."

Harry stared at the ground. "If you put it that way, it makes me wonder why we're even trying. Maybe this entire thing is a collective hallucination or something."

Snape's lips twisted into a parody of a smile. "I've been wondering the same thing," he admitted. "If we just lay down and accepted the fate of the wizarding world, it's likely nothing will happen to us."

"_Now,"_ Harry said with heavy emphasis on that word. "Who knows what might happen next? Has it ever occurred to you that we're fighting only for our own survival?"

"What else is there to fight for?" Snape said with a shrug. "Any fighting for higher ideals is garbage. Have you ever wondered why people joined Voldemort in the first place? It wasn't because they truly believed that purebloods were superior to Muggle-borns, not entirely anyway. Muggle-borns and half-bloods were bringing their Muggle culture into our world, diluting our customs, sometimes even laughing at them." His lips twisted. "I remember being enraged the first time I heard a Muggle-born criticise pumpkin juice as archaic and ask for orange juice instead."

"I've never thought about it that way," Harry said quietly. "But the thing is, some Muggle implements are better than wizarding ones. Pens, for example, are far better than quills. Change isn't always a bad thing."

"Very philosophical, Harry," Snape said dryly. "However, when has anybody ever been amiable to change? It took us fifty years to adapt to the Muggle car."

"Does that mean in two hundred years time we'll be using biros as opposed to quills?" Harry asked, only half sarcastically.

Snape frowned. "What is so good about the biro anyway?" he asked. "It doesn't have the same smooth consistency as the quill and often blotches."

"You don't have to dip it in ink?" Harry suggested. "Plus, it dries quickly."

"And it doesn't look as nice," Snape pointed out.

"Why are we having this discussion?" Harry asked, after a short pause.

"What do you mean by that?" Snape said, idly with a shrug. "I can have random conversations as well as the next person."

"Are you positive that Lucius Malfoy is on our side?" Harry asked suddenly. This question had been bothering him for quite some time now, while he watched Hermione get closer and closer to the man.

"Are you positive that _I'm_ on your side?" Snape said quietly. "One can _never_ be positive about these things."

"Malfoy never turned to our side during the Voldemort Wars," Harry pointed out. "You did, and at great personal risk to yourself. I trust _you._"

Snape's dark eyes gleamed. "And what makes you think that it was a great risk?" he said. "Perhaps I was simply playing both sides? Being a traitor to both sides and just waiting, biding my time, until I knew who would win?"

"You might have," Harry said, hoping that it wasn't true. "Did you?" he asked, after Snape didn't respond after a short pause.

"I would have thought that you of all people would know me better than that," Snape snapped. "For your information, no. I didn't. Betraying Albus would have been an immensely stupid thing to do, especially since I was under a blood oath."

Harry shuddered. Blood oaths were powerful things, unbreakable and classified as borderline Dark Arts. They were used very rarely. "Was that the only reason why you didn't betray him?" he couldn't help asking.

"No," Snape bit out. "Albus was like a father to me." There was something strange in his eyes, something that looked almost like hurt.

The rest of the time passed in silence.

**-**

It had been over three hours since Hermione had left the holding cell and Lucius supposed that she was back at Azkaban. During that period, the spell had intensified and Lucius now felt a constant tingling feeling. It would have been pleasant if he was able to actually do something about it and if he wasn't constantly remembering what the consequences of the spell were.

He had been left in the holding cell, so Lucius assumed that his cell was being evacuated of his belongings and made ready for a new occupant. He then wondered how many other people had died in the exact same position he was in now, with their hands in the same shackles. He glanced upwards, saw the remnants of dried blood on the shackles and suppressed a shudder.

Nobody had come in for the last three hours, but Lucius held no false beliefs in that regard. Narcissa enjoyed seeing the results of her handiwork and would definitely be here in the last few hours.

Blood loss, he remembered, was the key cause of death in these cases. It wasn't a clean, cauterised cut. His penis would fall off, engorged and swollen, and blood would begin spraying everywhere.

Darkly, Lucius hoped that Narcissa would end up covered in his blood. Dripping, more like it, he thought and winced. He just remembered a picture in a Dark Arts book he saw on this curse when he was younger. He'd never thought that it would be used on him. Unsurprisingly, the caster of the spell had to be a woman and most men didn't like the idea of even watching the spell take effect.

His breath caught in his throat as his cock gave another surge in his tattered robes. Lucius licked his dry lips and wished that he wasn't chained up against the wall.

He wasn't entirely sure why he had refused Hermione's offer of help. It had taken him completely by surprise. He had contemplated it while she was standing there, but he never thought that she would offer. It wasn't as though he found her unattractive. Although she wasn't beautiful by anybody's standards, there was vitality, stubbornness in the hazel eyes that intrigued him. And her body, in the brief moment she had kissed him in the street, felt warm and sweet. It had been so long.

Lucius groaned as the spell spiralled and intensified in his veins. Apparently thinking about it only made it worse.

And it wasn't because she was a Mud…Muggle-born either, he thought, but wasn't sure whether this was entirely true. In his fifty-one years of life, he had never, ever, touched a Muggle-born in that way and he wasn't sure he wanted to. Besides, he thought, it's a ridiculous idea anyway. Narcissa will surely find out that the spell isn't working and suspect Hermione.

He smiled wryly to himself when he realised that the last thought was rather protective. The thing is, he told himself adamantly, anything would be better than our world being run by Narcissa. She hadn't seemed entirely sane this afternoon and Lucius had already had one stint under an insane overlord. Even magical Britain run by Muggle-borns and halfbloods would be better than magical Britain under Narcissa, he thought. At least Muggle-borns – if Hermione was any indication – had morals.

He was jerked out of his thoughts by a key turning in the lock and the door to the holding room opened.

Narcissa walked in, bringing with her a whiff of her perfume. It was a distinctive floral scent, almost cloyingly sweet. He could feel her eyes looking at his bulging robes and saw the smirk on her face.

"I take it Hermione's spell is working," she said casually. "So the little Mudblood is actually able to cast spells."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "I thought you weren't going to be prejudiced."

"When have I ever told the truth, Lucius?" she said, with a small smirk. She waved her hand and the door behind her opened again.

Lucius paled as a Dementor's hand curled around the door, all rotting and green. Half a second later, the Dementor glided into the room. It stood – hovered – there and simply looked around the room. Or whatever it did under the hooded cloak. Lucius couldn't help but shudder. Dementors were the stuff of children's nightmares in the wizarding world. Nobody but the doomed saw a Dementor's face, but there were stories about what they looked like. Some said that it looked like a skeleton, green, and slimy with flesh hanging off. Others said that there was no face at all, only oblivion.

"I'm a nice person," Narcissa said with another terrifying smile. "Therefore, I am going to give you a choice. You can either hang there until the spell goes into full effect and believe me, it does get worse. Or you can get acquainted with my good friend here." She waved her hand and the Dementor glided forward.

Lucius decidedly did not like the choices she gave him. It was rumoured in wizarding Britain, at least, that souls given to Dementors were gone for eternity. Despite what the Chinese said, Lucius did not feel like giving his soul to a Dementor to keep and suck upon. Yet, he pondered as he suppressed a gasp upon feeling the spell surge once more through his veins, the alternative wasn't appealing either. "That's no choice," he said with a strained voice.

She tilted her head. "It is a choice, Lucius. You just don't like the choices."

He ignored her. "What are you planning to do to our world, anyway?" he demanded, not liking the weak, rasp of his voice.

"Lucius, Lucius, Lucius," she said with a shake of her head. "You must be leaking by now. And I believe that it has only been six or so hours. Can you last another _eighteen_ hours? Doubtless it's pleasurable now, but believe me," she smiled, "I've seen men go through this. By the end they beg me to cut it off." Her eyes gleam. "I just laugh."

"What are you going to do to our world?" he repeated, through gritted teeth.

"Solve our mistakes, of course," she said, sounding surprised. "We've been too kind to those sub-human Muggles. We've been too tolerant of Mudbloods and those abominations of halfbloods. It's disgusting how much we have diluted our blood to satisfy the weak in our population. I'm going to fix it."

"And how," Lucius forced out, "how are you going to fix it?" He kept the horror out of his eyes. Even the Dark Lord hadn't gone this far, he thought.

"A choice," she said simply. "All purebloods have a choice to be either with me or against me. We _are_ going to war with the Muggles and we _will_ win. Mudbloods and halfbloods will be killed."

It took all of Lucius's self control to stop him gaping at her. Was she insane? Halfbloods? They made up nearly fifty percent of the wizarding population. And going to war with the Muggles? Pure insanity. "I did hear that the Muggles have a weapon that can destroy the earth many times over," he said casually.

She smirked. "Pure Muggle propaganda," she said. "How can a single weapon destroy the world over? Impossible."

"But you have to agree that they do have other weapons that can kill a lot of us. We have few curses that can kill many people," he pointed out.

She waved a hand in dismissal. "That's your problem, Lucius," she said. "You think too small. We will create cloaking spells, of course, that are effective against their guns. We have already started upon it. They are effective against knives now."

"But your plan to kill halfbloods and Mudbloods," Lucius said, with a frown. "You will decimate our population!"

She raised an eyebrow. "Laws will be passed to counter that," she told him. A smile played about her lips. "Your pet Mudblood Granger will be first. Potter second. They have too much popularity."

"And who are you planning to blame their deaths on?" Lucius said wearily.

She gave a delighted laugh. "The Muggles, of course! Who else would kill some of our greatest heroes with guns? We will go to war against them in retaliation. And once we've won the war, we will cleanse our population."

Lucius had to admit that her plan was intelligent. Terrifying, but intelligent. He inclined his head towards the Dementor, who was standing there silently. "What about the rest of the Dementors?"

"They're part of our Army," Narcissa told him, obviously glad to discuss her plans with somebody. "Nothing can stop them since they've become immune to Expecto Patronum. I've negotiated the souls of the Mudbloods and halfbloods in return for their help."

How wonderful for the Dementors, Lucius thought. He thought she shouldn't be so cocky about the idea of her infallible Dementors but then again, she had never been to China and heard the rumours. He doubted many people on the planet now knew about the possible method of controlling them. "How did you stop this being reported in the media?" he asked. That question had been bugging him for quite a while now.

She smiled. "That was one of my more ingenious plans," she told him. "Mind suggestion. Not quite mind control, but very similar. Suggestions were planted in the minds of key media personnel. They really did think everything was fine in the wizarding world. I found it far more effective than blackmail but rather difficult to perform and needs to be renewed quite often."

Lucius had to admit he admired her genius for thinking up plans. They were twisted enough to be interesting but still seemed to work with surprising ease.

"Now, your choice?" she said, with an impatient tap of her foot.

Lucius had no idea what to say. He supposed silence wouldn't be interpreted as him wanting more time. It would be more like silence would be interpreted as both, he thought wryly.

The conversation he had almost two decades ago kept on repeating in his head. Simple, Lucius thought. Every Chinese person could control the Dementors. He didn't agree with Hermione's idea of it having something to do with Chinese history. Somehow, assuming China was like England, not everybody would know about history.

He frowned.

"I'm waiting," Narcissa told him. "Since I'm kind, you have five minutes to decide."

Every Chinese person.

Every Chinese person.

Simple.

Lucius gave a start. Could it be? Could it be _that_ simple and obvious? It fit. He frowned and tried to recall the correct words.

If this works, he thought. Then we've all been idiots.

Hermione was very surprised when she went outside to investigate a shift in the wards to see Lucius disembarking from a small leaky rowboat and stumbling onto the shores of Azkaban. There was somebody – or something – else on the boat. She squinted. It looked like… no, it couldn't be…. It looked like a Dementor. Her wand was out before he could say a word. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"Lucius Malfoy," he said, looking surprised and holding up his hand. She could see that one of his hands held a wand.

"Put that wand down, slowly," she ordered, staring at the Dementor out of the corner of her eyes. It didn't seem to be moving or being threatening. He complied. "Prove that you're Lucius."

He hesitated. "You kissed me while I was Polyjuiced as Potter to stop one of his ex-girlfriends. I tried to corner you in your room that night."

She slowly lowered her wand. It sounded like Lucius. It looked like Lucius. That would have been enough in the Muggle world, she knew, but this wasn't the Muggle world. It was the wizarding world and in this world, the person in front of her could be anybody. But the person also knew things that only Lucius would know. She put her wand back in her robe pocket hoping that she wasn't making an incredibly stupid decision "Why do you have a Dementor with you?"

"Long story," he said.

She stared at him when it became obvious he wasn't going to say anything else. "How did you escape?" she asked.

He gave her a rather satisfied smile – rather like a content cat, she thought. "I managed to think of the spell in time."

Hermione blinked. Her first reaction was, what spell? Then it dawned upon her that he was talking about the Dementor controlling spell. "How?"

"I just remembered it in time," he admitted. "It really is very simple."

"And…" she prompted.

"I just ordered it to not Kiss me," Lucius said.

She stared at him. "But that doesn't work!" she protested.

"It does when you give it as a command in Chinese," he told her. A wry smile twisted his lips. "It did end up being very simple. I just told it to either make sure that Narcissa unlocked my shackles or that she ended up without a soul. She made the right choice, obviously."

"How is she now?" Hermione asked, out of morbid curiosity.

"Still alive," Lucius said. "I Obliviated her and left her in the same shackles that held me. And I took the Dementor with me."

"Why didn't you kill her?" Hermione asked, rather ashamed at herself for asking.

Lucius let out a long breath. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I don't think I was strong enough for Avada Kedavra."

She blinked, when another thought occurred to her. "The spell?" Hermione asked, glancing downwards.

"Still, obviously, in operation," Lucius said. "It's been better since I was out of the cell but I doubt that will last."

By now, they had walked into the living quarters of the cottage. The Dementor had stopped at the door and was standing in what looked like a guard position. Hermione hoped that nobody would go outside, otherwise they would be in for a massive fright. Everybody else was in the kitchen talking. Lucius shook his head when he saw her head in that direction, so she led him to her room. "I wonder," Hermione mused when Lucius suddenly stumbled. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"The spell," he managed to say through gritted teeth.

She let out a deep breath and pushed Lucius into her room. Taking out her wand, Hermione muttered, "Silenco!"

Lucius stared at her. "What…" he began when she held up a finger.

"You have two choices," she said very quietly. "I researched the spell. You either die a very painful death or I help you now. I would get Jean to help you but you didn't seem eager to share your condition with anybody else. I know you think I'm only a Mudblood, but would you rather die?"

His eyes were focused on something behind her.

"Your choice?" Hermione asked, holding her breath. She wondered whether she was offering out of a sense of guilt. After all, it was her spell that was causing him this agony, and it would be agony he would be feeling now, she realised from the books. She definitely couldn't be attracted to him. It was ridiculous.

"I doubt I'd make a good martyr," he said dryly.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said and then hesitated. "How…" she waved her hand. "Should I…" To her embarrassment, she felt her cheeks flush.

"You can't even say it, can you?" he said. "A handjob should suffice."

Hermione stared at him, knowing that she volunteered for this but she still felt awkward. Hesitantly, she took a step forward. Then two. Then three, until she was standing in front of him. Not knowing why, she took one of his hands and squeezed it. To her surprise, he squeezed back.

"I'm sorry for putting you in this situation," he said, his voice rather rough.

She only nodded briefly. "I suppose," she said, rather embarrassed, "that I should… start." It hadn't ever been this awkward for her before. But then again, she thought with a wry inner smile, before, she had at least known that there was mutual attraction. Then again, it had never been as essential as it was now.

She reached out and began to unbutton Lucius's robes. "Where'd you get these?" she asked as she fumbled with the tiny buttons.

"I took them off the guard outside," he admitted. "The Muggles," his breath hitched as her hand brushed over his erection, "they looked at me rather strangely."

"I'm not surprised," she said softly as she finished unbuttoning the robes. A faint blush came over her cheeks as she realised that he was wearing no underwear underneath. What am I thinking, she wondered.

"Are you sure you're not a virgin, Hermione?" Lucius asked. To her surprise, his hand came up and cupped the side of her face.

"Positive," she said, her voice slightly breathless.

He took her hand in his own larger one and guided it. His breath came in short gasps and she felt a strange stirring inside her.

These will need to be washed, she thought with a mental nose-wrinkle as she looked down at her robes. Somehow cleansing charms didn't feel the same.

That thought was lost as he pulled her down in a bruising kiss.

When she finally pulled away, she noticed that he was still breathing irregularly. And so am I, she thought. Her hand came up to touch her lips and she found that they were rather sore.

"That was… interesting," she finally managed to say.

He nodded. "The spell seems to be gone."

"That's good," she replied and then cast a cleaning spell. It should do temporarily anyway. "Maybe," she said hesitantly, "we should go tell the others that you're back."

He nodded quickly. "That seems like a good idea." He paled suddenly.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I should have said this earlier," Lucius said. "Narcissa said that she planned to kill you and Potter and then use your deaths as a reason to take over the Muggle world."

She stared at him. "And that somehow left your mind, how?"

"I had other matters on my mind," he said stiffly.

She had to admit that it was understandable. Anybody in his position would have had other things on his mind. "Well, we'd better go tell the others about this. Doubtless Narcissa will be here soon. The Dementor is unlikely to keep her busy for long. Somebody will find her." Hermione licked her lips.

He stared at her mouth. "I should help you with that," he said, as he buttoned up his robes. Lifting up his hand, he touched the side of her mouth and the soreness disappeared.

"You can do wandless magic?" she asked, surprised.

"That wasn't really a spell," he admitted. "It just used the body's natural abilities to heal itself."

"Well, thank you," she said, feeling the uncomfortableness of the situation again. She opened the door and walked out, feeling the air move behind her as Lucius followed.

**-**

There was absolutely no warning.

Then again, Hermione realised, that was exactly how Narcissa wanted it.

One minute, it was a quiet peaceful morning, the sun was just rising over Azkaban and Hermione was sleeping fitfully. The next minute this was all the same, except Hermione had sat bolt upright in bed. She had just felt a _massive_ disturbance in the wards. Swinging her legs off the side of the bed, Hermione grabbed her wand on her bedside table. Apparently Narcissa's here, she thought grimly.

Rapidly, she knocked on everybody else's doors. She had explained the situation to everybody including Will and Jean last night. Hermione frowned. Jean had a strange expression in her eyes as Hermione had told her about the upcoming risk but Will had immediately offered his help. "It's time," she told everybody as they gathered in the kitchen. "I just felt a huge shift in the wards." She hesitated. "It felt like a lot of people."

Lucius then suddenly appeared in the kitchen. Behind him glided the black-hooded Dementor. "Ting," he told the Dementor. It stopped.

Harry gave it a wary look. Over the years, he had become less fearful of Dementors, but there was still something about the dark figures that haunted him. Even though this one was simply standing there and wasn't sucking in everybody's good emotions from the air around it, Hermione could still see the apprehension lining Harry's face. "Are you sure you can control it?"

Lucius raised an eyebrow. "Ba wo hou mian de men guan le," he told the Dementor.

To Hermione's surprise, the Dementor turned around, glided back towards the door and closed it with one clawed hand. "Is that what you told it to do?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

Last night, Lucius had told them about certain other elements that British wizards hadn't realised about the Dementors. The most important one, Hermione thought, was probably that Dementors could actively control who they affected. Lucius had said that he wasn't affected at all by the Dementor last night, so that probably meant that Narcissa was being targeted specifically. He had hoped that the Dementor would do the same today to Narcissa and whoever she had brought.

"What makes you think that Narcissa will actually show up today?" Will asked.

Lucius opened his mouth but Hermione beat him to it. "She seems like the kind of person who likes to do the dirty work," she said, with a minute shudder. Lucius nodded his assent.

"She will be here. It's personal for her," he told them.

There was a scuffling sound outside the window of the kitchen and Hermione was somewhat amused when everybody whirled around as one and pointed their wands at the window in question. Lucius had managed not only to procure a wand for himself but also one for Snape.

"This is a message for the following people," came a loud clear voice from outside. "Hermione Granger, Jeanette Latham, Lucius Malfoy, Harry Potter, William Sandhurst and Severus Snape. Your magical signatures have been determined to be inside the cottage and we have the cottage surrounded with forty ministry soldiers. You _will_ emerge outside with your hands up in exactly one minute or we shall be forced to start firing curses into the cottage."

Hermione frowned. She could have sworn that the voice outside was familiar but she couldn't place it. She shrugged. Perhaps she had worked with the woman before. Or maybe it was because of the _Sonorus_ charm which always altered voices slightly. "The change in the wards were big enough for that many people," she admitted quietly.

"Well then," Jean said, her voice strangely tight. "Are we going to surrender or not?"

Harry stared at her. "Surrender?" he said in a tone of voice that implied that he didn't even know the definition of the word.

Hermione then remembered Harry's absolute determination during the Voldemort War and how he wouldn't consider any option except absolute victory. "It may be a good idea," she said, even though she didn't want to say it.

"If there are forty Ministry _soldiers_ out there, then fighting them is suicidal," Jean said.

"You have ten seconds," the voice from outside said. "Nine."

"Surrender?" Hermione said, closing her eyes slightly.

"Eight."

"Seven."

"Six."

When she opened them, she looked over at Lucius who moved his head slightly to one side. The Dementor! She had almost forgotten about it, since it was so quiet. "We'll surrender. Jean's right. It would be suicide."

"Five."

Hermione tucked her wand in her belt and went over to the kitchen door that led to the outside. She opened it and could immediately see dozens of wands pointed towards her. She paled. Obviously the voice with the _Sonorus _charm hadn't been lying. She lifted her arms and placed her hands on her head as she walked outside. Everybody else followed her.

The Ministry soldiers formed a circle around the group. As Hermione moved her head slightly, she noticed that the Dementor wasn't in the circle with them. Obviously Lucius had left it in the kitchen.

Hermione tried to look unobtrusively at the soldiers. They were wearing black masks and black robes. She gave an involuntary shudder. They looked like Dementors. Or Death Eaters, she thought, paling. She had only heard a very faint rumour of Ministry soldiers, a division of Aurors who had been created after the resignation of Fudge the Great. Or incompetent, she thought, but that thought was frowned upon nowadays.

The lead storm trooper stepped forward and took off her mask and hood. Red hair came spilling out and bright brown eyes stared directly at Hermione.

"Ginny?" Hermione managed to gasp out. "I thought…"

Ginny gave a small smirk. "You thought wrong," she said quietly. "It was necessary for me to go… underground for a while."

"You let your family think that you were either dead or in jail?" Harry said, his tone incredulous.

"I have a new family now," Ginny said indifferently. "Don't think you can stop progress, Harry."

"You think this is progress?" Hermione asked softly. "Do you truly believe that, Ginny? What have they done to you?"

There was a flicker of something in her eyes but then it submerged and was gone. Hermione realised that the girl that she had known during Hogwarts was buried too deeply inside this new Ginny and was perhaps gone forever. This woman standing before her was hard. Harder than she had ever seen Ginny before.

Somebody was stepping through the crowd of storm troopers and without even looking at the figure, Hermione knew that it could only be Narcissa. There were subtle signs of respect in the storm troopers she brushed past. As she reached the front, Ginny stepped aside and inclined her head.

Narcissa was wearing a dark red robe that looked the colour of blood. She looked at Hermione and to Hermione's surprise, she smiled. "You almost fooled me, Mudblood. For that I congratulate you."

"I believe I did fool you," Hermione spat.

Narcissa's eyes flitted across their paltry little group and settled on her former husband. "I see Lucius is still alive. Pity. I never thought you would spread your legs for him, but obviously…" she let her sentence trail off and the meaning settle in everybody.

Hermione saw the smirk on Ginny's lips widen and her hand itched to slap it off. She could feel Lucius's posture stiffening behind her.

"What is she talking about?" Harry asked.

Narcissa gave a delighted laugh. "You sly little Mudblood. You didn't even tell them." Her eyes brightened.

"Hermione?" Harry asked.

"I'll tell you later," she said shortly. "It is nothing important."

"She's right," Will cut in, a small tremor in his voice. Hermione shot him a grateful look.

Jean was silent.

"Since you're such a little Mudblood whore, I'm sure some of my storm troopers would like to sample your wares," Narcissa said casually.

Hermione fought to keep her face neutral as Narcissa mentioned names of her former classmates. She resisted the urge to glance backwards at Lucius, and wondered when he was going to call the Dementor.

Just then, Narcissa glanced around at her storm troopers. "Have any of you checked inside the cottage?" she asked.

There was a collective murmur among the black clad group. As Hermione watched, a group of about five broke off and walked towards the kitchen door of the cottage. As they opened it, she felt Lucius shift behind her.

"Kai shi," he said quietly, so that only a few people around them could hear.

Hermione saw some of the storm troopers giving him a strange look. Then suddenly, one of the storm troopers stiffened and clutched at the mask that covered his face. Another one began to tremble. Some seemed relatively unaffected but their wand hands trembled. Ginny's face had gone pure white; her arms had wrapped around herself and she was shaking.

Turning slightly, Hermione looked at Lucius with a question in her eyes.

"It's powerful when they are directly ordered to do something," he murmured softly, his breath tickling her ear and she shivered.

Apparently it was only their little group that was unaffected. Even Narcissa's face had gone ashen and her eyes had glazed over. "Y-you M-m-Mudblood!" she spat out, her face contorted with rage and fear. "A-Av-Avad," she tried but obviously couldn't get the syllables out.

Hermione's hand went down to her wand, which was sticking out of her pocket, when a voice barked. "Not so fast!"

She paled. The voice was very familiar. Slowly, she turned around and saw that Jean had a wand pointed towards her chest. "Why?"

"They offered me far more than your friendship could give," she explained simply. "Now, I want everybody else to put down their wands or I will kill her. Believe me, I can get the Killing Curse out more quickly than you can disarm me."

Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione could see Harry motion for everybody to place their wands onto the ground. "Don't be stupid," she snapped. "What is one life compared to the entire wizarding world? Isn't it apparent that they're going to kill us?"

Jean looked at her. "Well, well," she said nastily. "It seems the Mudblood has finally managed to understand our goals."

"So what are you hesitating for?" Hermione ground out, furious at her friends. She supposed she would be equally hesitant in their position but that was no excuse! She could tell that some people were fighting and slowly overcoming the effect of the Dementor. After all, even magnified, there was still only one Dementor and forty or so people.

They still seemed to hesitate.

There was a small motion behind her and as she saw Jean's eyes flicker away from her own face, Hermione reached down and drew her wand out of her pocket. Jean's eyes immediately snapped back to her face and her mouth formed the syllables of the Killing Curse. But Hermione was faster and her spell had fewer syllables. "Stupefy!" she cried.

Jean fell backwards and collapsed onto the ground.

Now, everybody seemed to snap into action. Hermione stupefied ten storm troopers consecutively and watched as everybody else did the same.

Lucius, with a curl of his lip, walked over to his former wife – who glared at him through hate-filled, but still fearful eyes – and pointed his stolen wand at her. Hermione could hear the words, whispered as though they were, "Avada Kedavra."

Narcissa collapsed, the shielding spell still on her lips.

Hermione herself dealt with Ginny. Staring into the other woman's eyes, she was surprised to see the first flickers of fear in them. "Don't worry," she said. "I'm not going to kill you. Ron would never forgive me." With a flick of her wand, Ginny was bound on the ground.

She was so intent on this that she had forgotten that some of the storm troopers were fighting the coldness brought on by the Dementor. "Avada…" she heard somebody say behind her when somebody knocked her to the ground.

That was the last thing she remembered as her head hit the stone and she blacked out.

Author Notes: Almost finished! The next chapter is the last one. Thank you to everybody who has read and reviewed this. I'm very grateful for your support.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

"She's waking up," somebody said through the blur that was Hermione's thoughts.

Her first coherent thought was that her head ached _so_ much. It felt as though somebody had knocked her unconscious with a brick. As her memory began to come back, she realised that was exactly what had happened.

"What," she began, her voice croaky, "what happened?"

"One of the storm troopers managed to get out half of the Killing Curse but Malfoy knocked you to the ground before it hit you," Harry explained.

Hermione's mind couldn't seem to process this piece of new information. Lucius had saved her? Her? A Mudblood? A thought struck her. "Is he okay?" she asked, struggling to sit up. She slowly opened her eyes and the world swam into view in front of her. Harry was sitting beside her bed, looking down at her.

He nodded. "Yes, he's fine. Just has a concussion, same as you. Will's been treating both of you." He hesitated.

"I owe you an apology."

Hermione turned her head, wincing at the pain, and saw Snape sitting on the other side of her bed. A small frown creased her forehead as she wondered what the two were talking about before she woke up. Not insulting each other, she hoped.

"We all owe you an apology," Harry said, with a look at Snape. "We all froze when Jean pointed her wand at you. If you hadn't…" he trailed off.

"It's fine," she said, rather curtly. She closed her head and leaned back against the pillows. "What now?" she asked quietly. "We just killed the Minister. That is grounds to be Kissed."

Harry gave a wry smile. "I doubt Kissing would be used as a method of punishment from now on. Anybody could stop it."

"Anybody who knew Chinese," she corrected automatically. "That's supposing that this information gets out into the general public. After all, nobody knew before this."

"We fix the wizarding world, of course," Snape said dryly.

Hermione gave a small laugh, coughing slightly at the painful feeling. She took a sip of water from the glass beside her bed. "Haven't we already tried that?" she pointed out. "After the second Voldemort war. And look at how that turned out."

"We get Ron and the others out of prison, firstly," Harry said decisively.

"That's only the small things," Hermione said quietly and thoughtfully. Her head still ached, but she could see the massive problems mounting up in front of them already. "What do we do with the storm troopers? Who is going to be the next Minister? More importantly, what are we going to tell the public?"

"Don't you mean how much are we going to tell the public?" Snape said.

Harry stared at him but Hermione nodded slowly. "Indeed, that may be the only solution."

There was a small knock on the door and Will poked his head inside. "Hermione, Lucius is here to see you."

The door opened fully and Lucius stepped in. He was dressed in blue Azkaban inmate clothing for the first time in quite a while and Hermione almost giggled at how silly it made him look.

Snape and Harry exchanged looks over Hermione's bed and then both, almost in unison, stood up and walked towards the door. As he walked out of the door, Harry turned around. "I'll see you later then, Hermione."

Lucius came over to Hermione's bed and sat down on the chair recently vacated by Harry. "How are you?"

"I have a headache," she admitted. And then, she stared up into his eyes. "Thank you."

**-**

_The Daily Prophet, May 12, 2006_

"The sixth Minister for Magic in six years, was the word on every witch and wizard's lips today. Would this one last?

"Lucius Malfoy's inauguration is scheduled for next week but he has already resumed his former wife's duties after Narcissa mysteriously resigned. She is rumored to be in Switzerland after it was found that she appropriated Ministry funds for her own purposes.

"It surprised the entire wizarding world when former Death Eater Lucius Malfoy declared himself a candidate for the Minister-ship after all charges were dropped against him before Narcissa disappeared. Even more surprising was the staunch support given to him by war-hero Hermione Granger and war-hero Harry Potter He ran on a platform of tolerance and amending past mistakes and received a strong majority.

"Even the Muggle Prime Minister is said to be pleased with this new turn of events. See page six for a reprint of the letter received by the Ministry this morning by Muggle post.

"The Daily Prophet wishes Minister Malfoy all possible luck for his upcoming term in office."

fin

Author Notes: Yes, short chapter. Sorry about that. This fic is now finished. I do have plans for a sequel but I'm not entirely sure when I'll finish it. Reviews are always welcome. :)


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